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Scoop - NZ

A
taped conversation shows that in early 2011 Murdoch sent Roger Ailes,
the boss of his most important US media outlet, Fox News, to Afghanistan
to persuade Gen David Petraeus, former commander of US forces, to run
against Barack Obama as the Republican candidate in the 2012
presidential electio ...

Britain
says it will withdraw almost half of its troops from Afghanistan next
year as local security forces become increasingly able to take
responsibility.
The announcement comes as NATO prepares for a full security handover at
the end of 2014, despite fears that a civil war could follow ami ...

“Trade
Me was a mature product,” Cox said. In New Zealand, which has a
population of 4.4 million, there are 2.5 million registered Trade Me
users. “Everybody that they could get to, they had gotten to.
Penetration is maximised.”

The
second Obama administration is now just a month away, reminding us of
the century-old American tendency for second presidential terms to be
troubled and often unsuccessful. Second terms are particularly
vulnerable to scandal.

Having
first issued threats against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad over
unspecified intelligence regarding its chemical weapons, the Obama
administration is now warning that these arms may fall into the hands of
the “rebels” which Washington itself has backed.
This is the significance o ...

Independent - London

Police in Delhi yesterday used water cannon, tear gas and baton charges
to disperse crowds of demonstrators protesting over the gang-rape of a
student which has outraged the country.Related StoriesNorth Korean
leader calls for more powerful rocketsEight die in suicide bombing at
political rally ...

More than a week on from the Newtown massacre, America remains shaken –
and still in the dark about Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old gunman who
killed 26 people, including 20 defenceless first graders at Sandy Hook
Elementary, with a military-style rifle.Related StoriesAmericans look
past fiscal deb ...

In the nine days since 27 people – 20 of them young children – were
killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, at
least 500 are believed to died in the US because of the America's lax
gun laws. Hardly surprising, given there are almost 10,000 homicides
(and 20,000 more ...

The Afghan police charged with maintaining security in their own
country as coalition troops begin to pull out within months are still
"endemically corrupt" and riven with problems including nepotism and
drug abuse, internal government documents have revealed.Related
StoriesNorth Korean leader ...

The killers modelled themselves on their favourite characters from
Hollywood and recreated scenes they found particularly exciting. Anwar
Congo, who had started off by bludgeoning his victims to death, switched
to garrotting. "I watched gangster films where they always kill with
wire, it's fast ...

Blackwater’s rebranding continues at a torrid pace. Danger Room has
learned the latest Washington greybeard hired to spruce up the image
of the world’s most infamous private security firm is Jack Quinn, a top
Washington lobbyist and former White House counsel to President Bill
Clinton.﻿

More stores across the U.S. that offer deeply-discounted products are
seeing their sales decline after years of growth amid America’s “Great
Recession” — and one analyst said on Monday it’s another sign of even
deeper downturn. ﻿

Hackers flying the AntiSec banner claimed today that they compromised a
server at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and have released
internal data, including about 90,000 military e-mail addresses.﻿

Innovation Canada

If
Canadian postal workers were to design the perfect winter boot, it
would help them avoid slipping on icy walkways, stop them from missing
their truck brakes while driving and keep them from getting their
crampon spikes stuck in wooden porches.If the hearing impaired were
looking for a hearing ...

Cancer,
heart disease and stroke are leading causes of death among Canadians.
As a medical doctor, an associate professor of electrical and computer
engineering and a Canada Research Chair in Bioengineering and
Biophotonics, Victor Yang has a unique perspective on these deadly
diseases. Based at ...

For
the first time this past winter, the Canada Foundation for Innovation
(CFI) launched the Emerging Science Journalists Award (ESJA). The award
was created to support Canada’s talented young science writers. Below is
one of the winning entries by Roslyn Dakin, doctoral candidate in the
Departm ...

It’s
been known for years that plants can take up and store trace amounts of
hazardous metals like nickel, arsenic and cadmium from contaminated
soil in a process called phytoremediation. Until recently, however,
scientists assumed that plants weren’t capable of taking up a class of
toxic chemic ...

Trudging
through a dairy farm to collect manure samples isn’t exactly glamorous
work, but the odorous task is starting to have a big impact on the
health of dairy cattle in Atlantic Canada — and it will save the dairy
industry millions of dollars each year. Technicians at the University of
Princ ...

Signs of the times

The
Israeli prime minister has vowed to continue building settlements in
the "Israeli capital of Jerusalem," defying near-unanimous international
criticism of the illegal activity in retaliation for Palestine's
upgraded UN status.
­In an interview with Israeli Channel 2, Prime Minister Ben ...

I
lost my job (outsourced) on November 16th.
Since I no longer pay taxes (since I'm unemployed - and no I'm not
collecting unemployment), my tax dollars are no longer going to a
government intent on killing people who look (or think) a little
different than us.
That is the one thing I take com ...

After
nationwide calls to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines
following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Americans
concerned about the government's coming move to restrict the sale, the
transfer, the importation and the possession of firearms deemed too
dangerous to be in ...

A
vicious cold snap across Russia and eastern Europe has claimed nearly
200 lives, officials figures showed Friday, as forecasters warned it
would last until Christmas Eve.
In Russia, the cold has killed two people in the past 24 hours, the
Ria-Novosti agency reported, citing medical sources, b ...

The
Copahue volcano in Argentina's Neuquen province and Chile's Biobio
region began spewing ash and gas early on Saturday, but officials say
it's still in an early eruption stage. Chile's Mining Minister Hernan de
Solminihac says the volcano's smoke plume led Argentine emergency
officials to iss ...

The Galloping Beaver

Head
runnion of the NRA W. LaPierre is apparently calling for a database of
the mentally ill as a means of thwarting would be mass-murderers. The
idea I suppose is to exclude the mentally ill from owning firearms.
OK, I'll play. Ten per cent of Americans are on anti-depressants. Others
have v ...

NRA says gun violence on TV, movies, and videogames is to blame for US massacres.
NRA also says the "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
Somehow I don't think it occured them that the the very idea of a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a ...

Balloon Juice from Forbes.
Israel’s gun control laws are the opposite
of America’s, say Israeli officials. “Only those who have a license can
bear arms and not everyone can get a license,” the head of the firearms
licensing department told the Jerusalem Post. To qualify for a license, ...

This is quite amazing. Most of the attention naturally seems focussed on
the vapours inducing fact that Piers Morgan factually called Larry
Pratt a "stupid man". But pay attention at the 7:30 mark where Morgan
calls the Newtown mass murderer Adam Lanza "derranged" and Pratt
interjects and cor ...

What Michael Kimmel says:
In the coming weeks, we’ll learn more about Adam Lanza, his motives,
his particular madness. We’ll hear how he “snapped” or that he was
seriously mentally ill. We’ll try to explain it by setting him apart, by
distancing him from the rest of us.
And we’ll co ...

Media Matters for America

Conservative
media figures have long insisted that top marginal income tax rates
effectively target small businesses. This "zombie lie" has sprung up
throughout President Obama's first term as an argument against
Democratic proposals to renew the Bush-era rates only for middle- an ...

For
the second straight year, The O'Reilly Factor has devoted more than
three times as much airtime to the manufactured "War on Christmas" than
to actual military conflicts.O'Reilly Factor Spent Much More Time On
The Phony "War On Christmas" Than Actual Wars
O'Reilly Again Covered The "Wa ...

Fox
News figures accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of faking an
illness when she suffered a concussion after fainting due to
dehydration. The State Department has criticized Fox News contributor
John Bolton for engaging in "wild speculation based on no
information."Clinton Suffers Concu ...

Gun
researcher John Lott has made numerous media appearances in the wake of
the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. to argue against the enactment of
gun violence prevention measures. While Lott uses his media platform to
push a multitude of statistics -- often from his own research -- he has
been t ...

Global Research.ca

“(Liberty)
is indeed little less than a name, where the Government is too feeble
to withstand the enterprises of faction.” George Washington
Governments do not exist for the benefit of common people, those people
referred to in the Constitution as…

“The
American way of life is not up for negotiation. Period.” President
George H. W. Bush, 1992, first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro
With the re-election of President Barack Obama in the midst of
Hurricane Sandy, some hoped that…

The
latest sweetheart settlement with a major international bank, in this
case involving criminal activities that financial regulators describe as
“epic,” has once again lifted the lid on the cesspool of corruption
otherwise known as the world financial system.
UBS,…

by
David Samel
It looks like the Obama Administration’s proudest achievement in the
international arena – the execution of Osama Bin Laden – has caused the
death of nine UN health care workers and will continue to take a heavy…

TPM Cafe

You
could think of the Aspen IDEA report published today as a letter to the
head of the International Telecommunications Union, Hamadoun Touré,
suggesting that he should reconsider his intent to put the "light touch"
of government on the Internet's operations.
M. Touré will be running a majo ...

The
political battle lines are being drawn for the general election debate
over foreign policy and national security, and you can't do much better
than my fellow Democracy Arsenal blogger Michael Cohen for a guide. One
key theme of Michael's latest column for ForeignPolicy.com is what a
differen ...

Hoping
to head off alumni resistance to the brand-new "Yale-National
University of Singapore" college that the Yale Corporation has created
somewhat stealthily in collaboration with the government of that
authoritarian city-state, Association of Yale Alumni chairman Michael
Madison has inadvert ...

The
right-wing "pro-Israel" lobby has taken off its mask. In the wake of
my departure from Media Matters, it is in a celebratory mood. In one
article and column after another, the Israel-is-always-right types
cannot contain their feeling of triumph.
There are dozens of these articles. Here i ...

Water - AlterNet

This article was published in partnership
with GlobalPossibilities.org.The world's political leaders couldn't say
they hadn't been warned. In the run up to the UN climate negotiations in
early December in Qatar, it wasn't just the World Bank, the
International Energy Agency, global accoun ...

This article was published in partnership
with GlobalPossibilities.org.This week the sane
among us will scoff at those hoarding candles and food for another
apocalypse that fails to materialize. We’ll laugh at the accounts of
people readying their bunkers and at store shelves being ...

This story first appeared on DeSmog Blog. Next month Focus
Features releases Matt Damon’s new movie and the oil and gas industry is
worried sick about it.The movie, Promised Land, is about a Pennsylvania
farm town deciding whether to go forwa ...

Federal officials have given energy and mining companies permission to
pollute aquifers in more than 1,500 places across the country, releasing
toxic material into underground reservoirs that help supply more than
half of the nation's drinking water.In many cases, the Environmental
Protection ...

This article was published in partnership
with GlobalPossibilities.org.Ready for a vacation — or just ready to
start dreaming of one? Ethical Traveler, a nonprofit organization that
is a project of Earth Island Institute, just released its annual list of
the top places to hit if yo ...

Public Citizen in Texas

Fine
particles in the air (particularly those smaller than 2.5 micrometers
in diameter) cause a multitude of health problems, ranging from
difficulty breathing and asthma to heart attacks and premature death in
people with heart or lung disease. The question has been whether or not
cleaning the ...

The
Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) has taken a step that any
self-respecting supporter of renewable energy should do – ditched the
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This relationship looked a
lot like the fabled one between the scorpion and tortoise. Despite
member ...

Progress
Texas is hosting a special screening of the documentary Koch Brothers
Exposed at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar. They have already sold
out more than half the theater – be sure to reserve your seats now
before they sell out! From director Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed, WalMart:
...

In
a new peer-reviewed scientific study, experts said satellite data show
sea levels rose by 3.2 millimeters a year from 1993 to 2011 — 60 percent
faster than the 2 mm annual rise projected by the U.N.’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for that period,
however the IPCC wa ...

4420092303_637fae9673_m.jpg
Globally, activists at the forefront of human rights protection are
coming under increased scrutiny and attack by state and non-state
actors. Although being a human rights defender is becoming dangerous
work, the ...

Climate

(Reuters)
A top risk-management analyst warned on Friday that a decision by
Washington on TransCanada Corp's (TRP.TO) Keystone XL pipeline could get
delayed again into next summer, adding more pressure to already deeply
discounted Cana ...

(The Hill)
The House Natural Resources committee will devote more attention to
environmental reviews and their effects on advancing energy development
in a new subcommittee next Congress.
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) evalu ...

(Washington Post)
Oil prices fell to near $89 a barrel Friday as doubts intensified over
whether political leaders in Washington would be able to reach a deal on
the budget before a package of tax hikes and spending cuts
automatically ...

Duly Noted

Ethiopia
and Eritrea are still at each others’ throats. The two neighbours
fought hammer and tongs in sun-baked trenches during a two-year war over
a decade ago, before a peace deal ended their World War I-style
conflict in 2000. Furious veRed Sea, UNrbal battles, however, have
continued to this ...

Greece's
creditors have essentially let it off the hook by overwhelmingly
agreeing to take a 74 percent loss. So what better time to remember
one of the first times Athens got in trouble with paying its debts.

Greeks
smashing windows and setting fire to shops and banks in a fury of
opposition to yet more austerity is gripping, but not unique. There are
underlying elements than make such uprisings more common in Greece than
elsewhere.

Booman Tribune

Ramesh
Ponnuru and most of the crew at the National Review are somewhat
mystified about why the Republicans knifed their Speaker on Thursday
night. Yet, I think Mr. Ponnuru has identified the cause correctly.
The ideologues in the party do not want to vote for tax increases (even
if the result ...

Harry
Reid wants a replacement for the recently-deceased Senator Daniel
Inouye stat. Hawai'i Governor Neil Abercrombie must select someone from
three names that will be provided by the state's Democratic Party. The
Party leadership will convene at 8am on December 26th. Sen. Inouye
sent a lett ...

Why
does America have worse economic inequality than almost any other
developed nation? Because of the Republican Party. It's that simple.
Why is the Republican Party the way it is? That's a more complicated
question. A short answer is that the Republican Party is the way it
is because ...

You
know you will enjoy an article that begins like this: Disarray is a
word much overused in politics. But it barely begins to describe the
current state of chaos and incoherence as Republicans come to terms with
electoral defeat and try to regroup against a year-end deadline to
avert a fisc ...

Environmental Graffiti

Once
a year, fire breathers from all over Europe gather at the Palais de
Tokyo in Paris to showcase their dazzling but potentially highly
dangerous acts.
This is just a brief summary, please visit Environmental Graffiti to see
the full, formatted version of the article

A whole lot of cool linkage – from serious stuff, to lighter, more fun-filled matters...
This is just a brief summary, please visit Environmental Graffiti to see the full, formatted version of the article

When
Cape Gannets drop from the air at great speed and plunge dive beneath
the waves to catch fish, they do so with spectacular beauty and grace –
as these photos show.
This is just a brief summary, please visit Environmental Graffiti to see
the full, formatted version of the article

When
Cape Gannets drop from the air at great speed and plunge dive beneath
the waves to catch fish, they do so with spectacular beauty and grace –
as these photos show.
This is just a brief summary, please visit Environmental Graffiti to see
the full, formatted version of the article

Find
out about the amazing golden-orb weaver, which spins silk five times
stronger than steel, uses chemicals to repel ants, and can even capture
and eat birds!
This is just a brief summary, please visit Environmental Graffiti to see
the full, formatted version of the article

Doug Feith : Hong Pong

On
Wednesday, Dec 19th, indigenous and allies launched the first protest
in the United States in solidarity with their kin further north in what
is known today as Canada. Prime Minister Harper basically decreed a
bunch of lakes critical to indigenous survival are no longer
environmentally protec ...

"It
is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday
facilitate a police state." ~ Cryptographer/security guy Bruce Schneier
(src)
We all know the old motif - Feds staking out parking lots, reporting the
license plates back to Hoover. Nowadays things are a little different -
com ...

After
a long wait, on Nov 28 2012, the Minnesota Department of Transportation
(MnDOT) released ~2.97 gigabytes of data from inside the development of
a GPS-based vehicle tracking system intended to introduce a vehicle tax
- which would entail a great deal of data constantly collected by the
gove ...

By
Dan Feidt -- hongpong.com -- MINNEAPOLIS -- NOV 12 2012 -- Law
enforcement officers under a state training program called Drug
Recognition Evaluators encouraged people in downtown Minneapolis,
including Occupy Minnesota protesters at Peavey Plaza and other
vulnerable and houseless people to p ...

AlterNet's Breaking News

Source: Huffington Post The inspector general at the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has launched an investigation into a GOP political appointee
for attempting to thwart an agency probe into safety concerns at a
Michigan plant, NRC insiders tell The Huffington Post. In late May, ...

Source: Huffington Post The inspector general at the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission has launched an investigation into a GOP political appointee
for attempting to thwart an agency probe into safety concerns at a
Michigan plant, NRC insiders tell The Huffington Post. In late May, ...

Source: The Atlantic Wire Authorities are winding down their criminal
investigation of the failed brokarage firm, MF Global, and despite the
lack of oversight and the loss of more than $1 billion in customer
funds, it now seems unlikely that anyone at the firm will face criminal
ch...

Source: The Atlantic Wire Authorities are winding down their criminal
investigation of the failed brokarage firm, MF Global, and despite the
lack of oversight and the loss of more than $1 billion in customer
funds, it now seems unlikely that anyone at the firm will face criminal
ch...

IntelNews

The
United States government has argued in court that current and former
officials of Pakistan’s intelligence service should be immune from
prosecution in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks. At least 166
people, including 6 Americans, were killed and scores more were injured
when members of ...

Back
in November, we reported on the case of Valentin Danilov, a Russian
physicist who spent a decade in prison, allegedly for spying for China.
Many Russian scientists accuse the Kremlin of persecuting Danilov to
reinforce Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “attempts to intimidate
academics wit ...

War is a Crime.org

In
a recent interview, TSA Administrator John Pistole acknowledged that
his agency has been less than embraced by the public, and he again
promised, as he has for two years now, to focus on improving passengers’
experience with TSA screening. In that interview Pistole said that it
has ...

Maybe someday during holiday season and throughout the year they'll be
just cause to celebrate.
It's possible and hopefully likely if enough people work for it.
Sustained commitment makes change possible. It won't come any other way.
My passion is working every day for it. I urge o ...

Grist - News

by Sarah Laskow.
Before reading further in this post, ask yourself a question (and
answer honestly): Which do you care about more, guiltless (if hungry)
goats or the Galápagos Islands' giant tortoises?
If you answered goats, this post will make you sad.
Here was the ...

by Sarah Laskow.
Orcas might be charismatic movie stars, but they are also killer
whales. A family of beachgoers in New Zealand caught on film an orca
fighting with a few sharks. One shark was so eager to get away from the
whale that it beached itself in the shallow water. (That's t ...

by Jess Zimmerman.
Stephen Colbert has officially thrown his hat in the ring for
definitely possibly considering a run for president. He's already
out-polling Jon Huntsman! So what kind of environmental policy platform
could we expect from a President Colbert?
Well, for starters, no ...

by Christopher Mims.
Some chemists came up with a really clever way to observe the
intermediate stage of an atmospheric chemical reaction, and then some PR
flack got a hold of it and suddenly science has invented a brand-new
molecule that will solve all our climate change woes! As usual, t ...

by Jess Zimmerman.
We here at Grist mock a lot of people. But we don't always manage to
mock some sense into them. Which is why we're pretty psyched about the
response to Sarah Laskow's feature story revealing that congressional
staffers were making deadly wildfires into a fun ...

Digg Green

Invisible Opportunity

ROCKWELL:
You know, it shows how important the whole vaccination program is to
the regime. I remember some time ago hearing on NPR, one of the unlucky
instances when I was listening to NPR, and they were saying, well, you
know, we’ve known for a long time that hicks and rubes and stupid pe ...

By
Visible Well… tomorrow is the day; that long awaited day and today
seems like any other day, before some ordinary day to follow. Yesterday I
was sitting somewhere, I forget where and a flash of images came into
my head. This happens to me a lot. Things come out of nowhere, which is
actu ...

Tom
McKay December 18, 2012 “Did we just kill a kid?” Brandon Bryant, a
drone operator working for the Air Force, realized aloud. “Yeah, I guess
that was a kid,” another pilot replied. “No. That was a dog,” someone
answered via computer from a distant military ...

by
chris Talking Points Memo – by EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO Tennessee has
emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in
schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school
shooting. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during
its upcoming session t ...

On one of the highest hilltops in Elbert County, Georgia stands a
huge granite monument. Engraved in eight different languages on the four
giant stones that support the common capstone are 10 Guides, or
commandments. That monument is alternately referred to as The Georgia
Guidestones, or the ...

THE
CREATION (A recent message given to George Green from the "guys
upstairs")
We are pleased to bring understanding and clarification on what is the
Creation. This is a challenge because your language of communication has
not the words for describing this conception of Creation. So as not to
pu ...

In
his previous books, James Kunstler focused on the shortsighted vision
of suburban planning; now he expands that view to the country's urban
growth challenges and the need to drastically change our current course
of auto and oil dependency. The Long Emergency is filled with history
plus eye-op ...

Dear
Friends,
Thank you for your interest in our catalog of unusual and informative
materials. The knowledge gained will give you choices in the days ahead
and lessons of discernment as the chaos increases. It is necessary for
those of you who are now in the "know" so to speak, to begin to fo ...

Whether
we can believe this see-through-elephant-trunk footage or not, the
possibility that elephants have a triple fitration system within their
trunks has to have some credence. Otherwise, why on earth would leading
Republicans try to make it easier for big polluters to further pollute
the air ...

US
Ag Secretary, Tom Vilsack tells us to eat more natural foods a few days
after fully deregulating GMO alfalfa…I’m confused. Confused as well?
Read the links below and try to figure out this mess. From The New York
Times: Government’s Dietary Advice: Eat Less From Elephant Journal: ...

Unlike
the former Monsanto cartoon on this subject, this version shows a bit
more clearly who surrendered the future of organic agriculture to
Monsanto. There’s been a lot of talk from both sides (organic and
biotech) about compromise. That is misleading and almost laughable
(read: cryable ...

Inhabitat

Turning
your abode into a sanctuary of high-end green design has never been
easier, especially with all the amazing pieces being put out by
creatives across the globe. 2012 proved yet again that taking
sustainable approach is not just passing a fad, but at the core of any
good design. From a pla ...

Every
kids dreams of having their own treehouse, but imagine how giddy they
would be if they found out they could have one indoors. Parents are
taking sleep to new heights by building their kids some seriously
awesome treehouse beds that not only look amazing, but provide a great
way to update s ...

British
Columbia-based Hyperstealth Biotechnology claims to be working on an
extraordinary “invisibility cloak” that would render its wearer
virtually invisible. Citing security concerns, the camouflage-design
company has yet to provide anything beyond mock-ups of the Quantum
Stealth ...

Email
and social networking sites have led to a sharp decline in the amount
of paper used to communicate and store information. But that doesn’t
mean paper is completely obsolete in the digital world. A company called
intelliPaper has found a way to transform tiny scraps of paper into
full ...

The
Touchfire iPad keyboard is a transparent, flexible, squishable,
silicone membrane, weighing less than an ounce. The Touchfire's surface
is molded into the shape of keys so you can type on the tablet screen
with ease.

WIRED Magazine | Science

Hydrae
Chasma is a deep, circular depression on Mars approximately 50
kilometers across, situated between Juventae Chasma to the north and the
large canyon system Valles Marineris to the south. The Chasma has steep
walls flanked by numerous landslides and ...

The
longest-operating Earth observing satellite is ending its mission after
nearly 29 years, more than 150,000 orbits and 2.5 million images.
Landsat 5 outlived its planned 3-year operation almost 10 times over,
saving the continuity of the Landsat mission. Landsat ...

Just
in time for the holidays, a new study has delivered 33 new species of
trapdoor spider. The additional arachnids more than quintuple the
members in the genus Aptostichus, boosting the described total from
seven species to 40.

NASA
recently unveiled a prototype spacesuit, the Z-1, to be used by
astronauts in deep-space missions. Everyone with eyeballs immediately
noticed the similarity between the agency's idea and the character of
Buzz Lightyear from Pixar's Toy Story movies. Here, we ...

The
giant star Zeta Ophiuchi is having a "shocking" effect on the
surrounding dust clouds in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope. Stellar winds flowing out from this fast-moving star are
making ripples in the dust as it ...

PakAlert

An
executive order from President Obama aimed at protecting the nation
from cyberattacks is likely to be issued in early 2013, and perhaps as
soon as January, observers say.
The long-awaited executive action is unlikely to be taken before the end
of the year, given the delicate negotiations o ...

To
the uninitiated, H.A.A.R.P.(High Frequency Active Auroral Research
Program) is a Military run research fascility that is believed to be the
result of Nikola Tesla’s research into Electro-Magnetic Frequency
energy. The mystery surrounding HAARP is legendary to say the least.
Many alternative m ...

Yesterday,
the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act which funds the
Pentagon and military operations for 2013 to the tune of $633 billion.
The vote was 315-107, but the final draft must still be approved by the
Senate.
The Senate version included an amendment that was suppos ...

China
now has accumulated approximately $3.2 trillion in convertible currency
reserves, of which nearly $1.2 trillion are held in U.S. treasury
bonds. This has happened through their escalating balance of trade
surpluses with America – they sell to us much more than we sell to them.
In the proce ...

What
a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a
"great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing
of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even
worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we
educate t ...

Andy Worthington

As
the 11th anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at
Guantánamo Bay approaches (on January 11, 2013), I wanted to make sure
that I made available an interview I undertook recently with the
respected progressive radio host Peter B. Collins, in San Francisco.
Peter&# ...

Memories
of Summer: The Thames Festival on London’s South Bank, a set on Flickr.
Sunday September 9, 2012 was the final day of the weekend-long Thames
Festival, established in 1997, and run by the Thames Festival Trust,
which regularly attracts tens of thousands of visitors, and did so aga
...

For
those of us who have been arguing for years that senior officials and
lawyers in the Bush administration must be held accountable for the
torture program they introduced and used in their “war on terror,” last
week was a very interesting week indeed, as developments took place in
...

I
wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I
established in January with US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us —
just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to
the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our
activities by ...

Top
of the World: Nunhead Allotments, and the View from the Hill-Top
Reservoir, a set on Flickr. The photos in this set — the 67th in my
ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike — were taken
on September 8, 2012, a lovely Sunny Saturday, and are the second of
five se ...

drinking liberally in new milford ( with beersphere feeds )

The
ink on the legislation is still drying and, already, the mortgage mill
industry is trying to gut the little things that might help to hold them
accountable for their bit part in the complete economic collapse of
this nation:
Dodd-Frank requires that lenders retain five percent of every loan ...

Is
this a parody or real life? You decide.
Citizens of New Milford:
I want you to know that I'm on the job 24/7. Twenty four hours a week,
seven months a year. But even with this strict time commitment, I can't
be expected to keep up with everything going on in this vast metropolis.
That's why ...

The
conservative Blue Dogs acted as Bush's domestic poodles, helping to
move a dangerous right wing agenda.
They were owned by the right wing and corporations and there is no big
surprise why more than half of the Blue Dog caucus (28 of 54 members)
were slaughtered in the 2010 elections.
So f ...

Sober
up, Dems.
You started sucking suds when you captured the Congress in 2006. Since
2008 you've been binge drinking with Congress and the Prez. You even
nibbled on some hot wings and pub nuts. Burp!
And now the bartender just cut your drunk, lazy, liberal, progressive,
leftie ass off. Y ...

So.
What the heck happened last night?
The GOP picked up 60 seats in the House, effectively reversing their
losses there from 2006 and 2008, and returning control of that body to
them.
The GOP picked up some 6 seats in the Senate, but the Democratic Party
retains control there.
The GOP picked u ...

SPL Center

Joseph
Banks, the most prolific bank robber in Chicago history, who became one
of the city’s most daring escape artists when he and another inmate
broke out of a federal high-rise jail by scaling down 15 stories on a
rope made of bed sheets, was back in court today after being captured
lat ...

An
Indiana man who pleaded guilty yesterday to setting an Ohio mosque on
fire told a judge he was motivated by media accounts – specifically
those on Fox News – suggesting Muslims were threatening Americans
and were in control of parts of the federal government.
Details made public at the plea h ...

Last
year at this time, self-described prophet Warren Jeffs was predicting
the end of the world. According to eight revelations he issued from a
jail cell at the beginning of December 2011, divine vengeance was slated
to fall upon a nation “fully ripening in iniquity.” Earthquakes were to
rock A ...

One
of two bank robbers who made a daring jail break Tuesday morning,
shimmying 15 stories down the side of a high-rise lockup in downtown
Chicago on a rope of bedsheets, claimed at his trial to be a “Moorish
national,” exempt from federal laws that forbid such things as taking
large sums of cas ...

Last
year at this time, self-described prophet Warren Jeffs was predicting
the end of the world. According to eight revelations he issued from a
jail cell at the beginning of December 2012, divine vengeance was slated
to fall upon a nation “fully ripening in iniquity.” Earthquakes were to
rock A ...

change: org.

Empty newsfeed.

Common Dreams -News

The
US Food and Drug Administration said Friday that a genetically modified
salmon that grows twice as fast as normal salmon is 'unlikely' to harm
the environment, clearing the way for the first approval of a
scientifically engineered animal for human consumption.
The environmental asses ...

U.S.
President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on
Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him
“the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead”.
But Obama offered no hints as to whom he will pick for the rest of his n
...

Appearing
on the first floor balcony of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London Thursday
night, Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange delivered a speech to both
mark his sixth month anniversary under the protection of the Correa go
and announced that his group's work—desphit his ongoing strug ...

The
NRA on Friday broke its week of silence following the Newtown,
Connecticut massacre to offer a "self-serving tirade" that offered one
solution to school shootings--more guns in schools.
The group's CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre stated at a
press conference tha ...

Nearly
three weeks after they were arrested on misdemeanor charges, activists
who barricaded themselves inside a portion of pipe to protest the
construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline remain in a Texas jail, each
held on $65,000 bail.
Mathew Almonte and Glen Collins were arrested Dec. 3 in Wino ...

From now until January 4th you can get three free months of
Flickr's Pro account. You'll enjoy unlimited uploads and viewing of your
photos and videos, the ability to post photos in up to 60 groups, and
you can also download your original photo files whenever you'd like,
handy for photogra ...

If you need to occasionally haul building materials, ladders, or
other long and/or bulky items that won't fit in your aluminum roof rack
system you can put together a wooden frame that can attach to your roof
rack and hold up to 500 lbs of cargo using lumber, ratcheting roof
racks, and car ...

As my six-year-old house has settled in, a few nails have popped
out of the wall between drywall and wooden studs throughout seasons of
the wood swelling and contracting. The easy way to remedy this situation
is to drive in a drywall screw near the nail pop to keep the drywall
paper in pla ...

Water Privatization

Partial
privatization of the county's special water districts remains on the
Madera County Privatization Committee's table for discussion -- a
possible change discussed further Dec. 13 at the committee's most… Click
to Continue »

(MENAFN
- Arab News) A few years ago, the Kingdom moved toward the
privatization of several state-owned companies and offered (listed) them
in the financial markets. But it took a strategic turn in ...

To
comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court, state-run firms National
Power Corporation and Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management
Corporation (PSALM) are currently amending some provisions of the Asset
Purchase Agreement (APA) as well as the Operation & Maintenance
Agreement (OMA) pr ...

Guardian

Foreign
Office accused of 'morally repugnant' move that could deny compensation
in Mau Mau caseThe British government has provoked outrage by
contesting a high court ruling that gave three elderly Kenyans the right
to claim damages for abuses suffered during the Mau Mau insurgency of
1952-1960.D ...

Near
a biblical landscape of donkeys and olive trees, homes are being built
and Palestinian Christians fear for their futureAmid plastic bags
snagged on gorse bushes, rusting hulks of cars in a breakers yard and a
few shabby trailers, traces of a biblical landscape are still to be
found on a hil ...

The
author of Where the Wild Things Are was driven to make rich, complex,
even dangerous art for childrenPlaywright and screenwriter Tony Kushner
remembers his friend Maurice SendakOne morning several years ago, Lynn
Caponera, Maurice Sendak's longtime assistant, housekeeper and
best-belove ...

Neil
Armstrong was a calm, level-headed man always destined for great things
– and perfect to lead the Apollo 11 mission to the moonDudley Schuler
is a childhood friend of Neil Armstrong from Ohio, USA.Neil was one of
my very best friends. We first met when I was 12 or 13. I had moved to
Wapakon ...

The
sophisticated, spiritual Donna Summer was responsible for so much more
than Love to Love You BabySinger Donna Summer was a leading light of the
70s disco movement, as was guitarist Nile Rodgers of the band Chic.
Before I knew who Donna Summer was, I walked into a nightclub in
Greenwich Villa ...

McClatchey

They
need to change the subject. Turn the conversation away from questions
about assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and 26 first-graders
and teachers mutilated by high-velocity bullets on a cold…Click to
Continue »

President
Barack Obama on Friday nominated Sen. John Kerry for secretary of state
in his second term, calling the Vietnam veteran and onetime
presidential contender the ?perfect choice to guide…Click to Continue »

OCEANSIDE,
N.Y. - A 6-year-old girl from Afghanistan is recovering at a Long
Island hospital after undergoing surgery on her face to repair damage
done by a Taliban bullet. Newsday reports that the ...

Futurismic

Perhaps
it’s because of the economy is beginning – finally – to pick up in the
US. Perhaps it is because I’m sick to death of bad election-year
politics, so I’m looking at anything else that comes along of interest.
Maybe it’s even because I wrote about creative destruction the last time
I did a ...

I
get a fairly regular flow of emails about independent film projects.
Most of them, to be honest, bounce straight off me – which says less
about their quality than it does about my own taste in cinema.
Independent cinema – like independent music and literature – has lots of
pr ...

So,
I stand accused of censorship by someone whose comment I declined to
approve on this post. I figure anyone willing to throw around
accusations of censorship is probably a big fan of radical transparency;
hence, by way of amelioration, here is the digital papertrail for the
full exchange. (Em ...

Soooooo,
yeah – I’ve been busy. Did you miss me? New job, Masters degree…
doesn’t leave a lot of spare time, so it doesn’t. But it’s been quiet
here too long, so it’s time to dust down the soapbox and run a
mic-check. One-two, one-two. The Future Always ...

Last
month I pondered the extent to which the Arab Spring and Occupy
Everything are socially-driven acts of creative destruction. Creative
destruction is defined as a “process of industrial mutation that
incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within,
incessantly destroying ...

Whistleblowers Protection Blog

Take
Action!
As part of a House/Senate Conference approved Tuesday, Congress passed
an “Enhancement Act” for Department of Defense contractors. These
contractors already had a right to go to federal court and obtain a jury
trial.
However, this new “Enhancement Ac ...

This
year, as you are deciding what to give your loved ones, friends, and
colleagues for the holidays, why not choose to give something
interesting and useful? One of the most powerful gifts you can give is
knowledge.
The Whistleblower's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What's Right
an ...

The Justice Department confirmed in a release issued on December 4 that
it has been a record year for recoveries from the False Claims Act. In
fact 2012 garnered the DOJ the “largest annual recovery in Department
history.” Most of the recoveries were from actions filed ...

On
November 5, 2012, the National Whistleblower Center filed a briefing
paper/amicus brief with the Internal Revenue Service addressing key
questions of law governing the IRS Whistleblower program. The brief,
linked here, addresses the issue of "collected proceeds" under the IRS w
...

Science Express

(PhysOrg.com)
-- The economic growth across much of Asia comes with a troubling side
effect: pollutants from the region are being wafted up to the
stratosphere during monsoon season. The new finding, in a study led by
scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, provides
additiona ...

Supermassive
black holes found at the centers of distant galaxies undergo huge
growth spurts as a result of galactic collisions, according to a new
study by astronomers at Yale University and the University of Hawaii.
Their findings appear in the March 25 edition of Science Express.

A
team of scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and other
institutions has solved the structure of a key protein from the virus
that caused last year's "swine flu" influenza epidemic. The structure
reveals that the virus shares many features with influenza viruses
common in the early 20 ...

(PhysOrg.com)
-- Two Dartmouth biologists have found that brown anole lizards make an
interesting choice when deciding which males should father their
offspring. The females of this species mate with several males, then
produce more sons with sperm from large fathers, and more daughters with
spe ...

TechDirt

Hello
everyone. My name is Cory J.G, better off known as Cory of PRIVATE Corp
or Cory of PC for short, and I'm a fan-fic writer. I'm really a
story-teller, with a wide array of skills under my belt, and I am in the
process of trying to get a job. I do like to see myself doing something
related t ...

Every
year, we talk about how January 1st is public domain day in many parts
of the world, but thanks to constant copyright term extension, the US is
left waiting and waiting and waiting -- kind of like the famous play by
Samuel Beckett, which entered the public domain in many places around
the ...

As
we all know, not only is Germany the land of chocolate, it's also the
land of effed-up IP laws. And this case under discussion here is
severely effed-up, not to mention long-running. This is a 12-year (and
counting) battle waged over a 2-second rhythmic sample.
Back in 1977, Kraftwerk re ...

It's
time for Obama to appoint a few ambassadors and the short list appears
to be stuffed with exactly the sort of people that the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce would wholeheartedly approve. The CoC's desire to rewrite other
nations' IP laws through slanted "free trade agreements" or the odious
TPP w ...

Food
labeling can be a controversial topic when it comes to getting everyone
to agree what information should be included with various foods. That
said, technology that just enables printing information on food can lead
to some fun (not just informative) innovations. Here are a few cool
ways to ...

VacTruth

If
you’ve ever been in a doctor’s office with a child, you know what I
mean. Doctors are well known for applying psychological pressure to
parents questioning vaccines. Maybe you’ve experienced this pressure?
Here are five psychological triggers doctors use against you, the
parent, and some of t ...

We
know that the NIH and CDC have fallen way short in recognizing, let
alone fixing, this autism epidemic. They’ve proven that time and time
again. But Congress is listening. They understand that autism is an
emergency, that it’s not genetic, that something is terribly wrong...

Documentation
received from the National Coalition of Organized Women (NCOW) states
that between 2009 and 2010 the mercury-laden combined flu vaccinations
have increased Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting Systems (VAERS) fetal
death reports by 4,250 percent in pregnant women.

BroadSnark

If
you pay attention to nothing else in this post, please read this piece
on how the government created residential segregation in our cities. De
facto my ass. Red Emma’s in Baltimore is expanding. Please help. Is
giving homeless people cigarettes an ethical dilemma or are Swedish
health g ...

I
had no intention of writing anything about the school shooting in
Connecticut. Maybe Pablo Neruda could have found words to talk about
something like that, but it is beyond my capacity. I understand the
desire for people to ask how it could happen and how we can prevent it
from happening again ...

This
weekend I got into an argument about music. The person I was arguing
with was blasting gangsta rap for glorifying behavior that was ruining
their own communities. He even went so far as to say that the music, and
everything it stood for, was causing racism. I went a little
apoplectic. I may ...

I
have disappeared again, mostly hiding in a case of vodka. But I have
also been helping to put together the benefit show this Saturday. If you
are in the area, come out. Also, there is a protest out at Ft. Meade on
Tuesday. The FB event is here.

Took
this pic in San Pedro Sula a few years ago. Those guys are on top of
the mall. They don’t fuck around with shoplifting in that town.
Apparently, SPS is now the most dangerous city in the world. Perhaps
they need to rethink their strategies. What kind of fucktard cares more
about putti ...

War in Context

Reuters
reports: The identity of al-Nusra’s leadership is not clear. A shadowy
figure known as Abu Muhammad al-Golani – whose nationality is not known –
has been named by some as the head. But an Islamist opposition
campaigner who toured northern and central Syria a few days ag ...

On
September 16, 2001, Dick Cheney warned that in order to deal with the
terrorism threat: “We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend
time in the shadows of the intelligence world.” It was as though the CIA
was being directed to venture into unfamiliar territory. An ABC News
...

Naomi
Wolf writes: People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten
steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at
what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what
will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by [...]

The
Kristol-Abrams cabal is on the war path again, concerned that the next
United States secretary of defense might not be more loyal to Israel
than he is to his own country. For the Emergency Committee for Israel,
run by William Kristol, Elliot Abrams and their cohorts, placing the
interests of ...

In
the bizarro world of political correctness, it’s better to say “Israel
lobby” than “Jewish lobby” even though members of the lobby regard the
use of either term as anti-Semitic. On the other hand, no one bats an
eyelid at the term “Jewish state” even ...

Watts Up With That?

While
Matt Ridley makes mincemeat of über alarmist Joe Romm’s latest
ridiculous claims, I started doing a search for stories to do a “year in
review” for such things. I just found this, though it is six years old.
It … Continue reading →

Concept
and wording by Anthony, art and prose tweaking by Josh of
CartoonsByJosh.com (be sure to visit his tip jar) As sung to the tune of
The Twelve Days of Christmas by EveryMann, Climate Scientist, with
backup vocals by the … Continue reading →

Guest
post by Paul Homewood In their attempts to disguise the fact that 2012
will likely turn out to be one of the colder years this century, NOAA
have made the ludicrous, and frankly dishonest, claim that this year
will … Continue reading →

Guest
post by Alec Rawls In an interview with NewScientist magazine, Imperial
College professor of atmospheric physics Joanna Haigh scoffs at the
idea that late 20th century warming could have been caused by the sun:
Haigh points out that the … Continue reading →

You
don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that there's something
going on if a train crosses the US-Canada border 12 times back and forth
(24 times across the line) without unloading its cargo.

Biosingularity

The
health of most of the planet’s population is rapidly coming to resemble
that of the United States, where death in childhood is rare, too much
food is a bigger problem than too little, and life is long and often
darkened by disability. High blood pressure is now the leading “risk
factor” for ...

A
new study by NYU School of Medicine researchers suggests that an
existing HIV drug called maraviroc could be a potential therapy for
Staphylococcus aureus, a notorious and deadly pathogen linked to
hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations each year. Their study is
published online this week i ...

A
first-of-its-kind antidepressant drug discovered by a Northwestern
University professor and now tested on adults who have failed other
antidepressant therapies has been shown to alleviate symptoms within
hours, have good safety and produce positive effects that last for about
seven days from a ...

Vitamin
D slows the progression of cells from premalignant to malignant states,
keeping their proliferation in check A team of researchers at McGill
University have discovered a molecular basis for the potential cancer
preventive effects of vitamin D. The team, led by McGill professors John
Whit ...

CFACT

The
new robber barons are not content with only taxes and debt. They are
using other people's hard-earned money to finance wind, solar, biofuel
and other schemes that reward crony capitalist campaign
contributors.while locking up centuries of vital energy resources.

The
end of the world just got serious.
On the eve of the winter solstice, as the Mayan calendar ran out, the NY
Times reported that yields of the world's most fabulous fungus, the
black diamond itself, the $1,200 per pound Périgord truffle is in
decline and it’s your fault!

I
was delighted to actually see a herd of nearly extinct bison – right in
the middle of the oil sands mining project in northern Alberta, which I
visited a few weeks ago. Much of this oil is destined for the USA, to
reduce imports from dictatorships, and more will come in the Keystone XL
Pipeli ...

The
tax credit for wind must stop. Not just for debt, fiscal cliff and
economic reasons. Wind turbines disrupt and destroy wild habitats. They
butcher birds and bats that are vital to ecological diversity and
agriculture.

National
Journal: The U.S. has a $16 trillion national debt that is growing
nearly exponentially. Precious federal dollars ought not be wasted to
promote production of high-cost energy. Let the wind production tax
credit expire with the old year.

North
Korean leader Kim Jong-un has called for further development of space
technology and the launching of more rockets following the successful
launch of one earlier this month, Kyodo reported on Saturday.

Pruning Shears

The
massacre in Newtown has once again opened up the discussion of firearms
in America. We are getting the usual dumbassery about how this is a
punishment from God or the fault of video games (which apparently are
unavailable outside of the US) and the usual preemptive whining about
how this is ...

One
of the under appreciated hazards of fracking is its effect on
democracy. Fracking is a big, intrusive process - one that sucks up
lots of water, creates enormous amounts of traffic and an ungodly amount
of noise, etc. Setting aside the environmental dangers and health
effects (!), the heav ...

Video
here.…now sits there with two contaminated wells up for sale. As you
can imagine, there’s not a lot of customers for a contaminated farm. So
it’s sitting there waiting to go into bankruptcy. Her husband’s in
Africa serving in the military. Her horses - she has t ...

Corrente
is having its fund raiser; please stop by and throw some money into the
hat if you can.Corrente is an important site for liberals to support
because of what it is and what it does. Here’s what it is: an old
school blog. While political blogs existed before 2000, they
weren&#8217 ...

Civil
liberties are more often than not difficult to stand up for in
practice. In theory everyone is in favor of them, but the only times
they make it into national debate is when they are under attack. When
times are good policy makers and the public don’t seem to give much
thought to r ...

Organic Consumers.org

Last
Thursday, I braved the hordes crowding Seattle's convention center to
offer their opinions on a proposed coal-export terminal, proposed for
construction just north of Bellingham, Wash., that would ship coal
arriving on trains from the Powder River Basin overseas to Asia.Click
here to read t ...

Organizations
representing family farmers, ranchers, and consumers from across the
country express cautious optimism about the impact of U.S. Department of
Agriculture's (USDA's) announcement today of its final Animal Disease
Traceability (ADT) rule. The rule was publicly released by the USDA o
...

As
we start 2013, many people will be thinking about plans and promises to
improve their diets and health. We think a broader collection of
farmers, policy-makers, and eaters need new, bigger resolutions for
fixing the food system--real changes with long-term impacts in fields,
boardrooms, and o ...

Don't
fancy the thought of your spinach and carrots being grown in sewage
sludge?
Neither does Mario Ciasulli, a semi-retired electrical engineer living
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Mario likes to cook, and enjoys good
food. When he found out last year about the practice of spreading dried a
...

Center for a Livable Future

Agriculture
and the food system play a huge role in climate change – they’re far
more important than most of us recognize. Because of that, choosing what
to put on my table and on my own plate is a powerful act.

Black
Olive owner Stelios Spiliadis and his family have been introducing
Baltimore not only to their Greek culture, but also to their passion for
health and wellness. Their hopes of inspiring real change through the
power of good food have been spreading like wildfire.

It’s
my hope that GAP’s lawsuit against FDA will finally compel the agency
to break ties with drug companies and release the information that the
public health community needs to monitor the use—and misuse—of
antibiotics and other drugs in food animal production.

"My
first objection to this kind of program is semantics. Let's call it
what it is: pollution trading. Excess nutrient pollutants in the bay
lead to public health problems, just as other pollutants do."

My Care2 Picks

Small
grazers at the base of the food chain most directly affected, raising
the question of whether the benefits of using dispersant are enough to
offset the negative effects.
Submitted by John Farnham to Society & Culture | Note-it! |
Add a Comment

A look back at older thoughts on an ongoing political football
Continues in the next post http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2012/12/12-december-more-on-ghgs.html
Submitted by John Farnham to Science & Tech | Note-it! | Add a Comment

125
International Scientists Rebuke UN for Climate Claims in Open Letter:
'Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused extreme weather
of past few years.
Submitted by John Farnham to Environment | Note-it! | Add a
Comment

Charging
Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit espionage would effectively be
setting a precedent with a charge that more accurately could be
characterized as conspiracy to commit journalism.
Submitted by John Farnham to US Politics & Gov't | Note-it! |
...

When
it’s time to renew your home insurance policy, make the time to go over
the details. Understanding the nuances in the fine print can save you
money. It is up to you to decide if money today is...
[[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]

Today
sushi is associated with a global trend as well as a Japanese food
tradition. Not all countries’ traditional dishes are welcomed that
eagerly by the rest of the world, like lutefisk from Norway...
[[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]

Few
decades back we hardly thought of distance learning evolving as a major
schooling practice. With the advent of distance education students were
surprised at the numerous opportunities they were...
[[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]

As
the popularity of online higher education continues to grow, a younger
group of students has noticed the convenience of online learning. Online
courses are a realistic option for young students...
[[Continue reading Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo...]]

Farm Wars

Propaganda
does not require evidence to prove itself. It simply utilizes the
ignorant masses that believe what they see and tend to repeat the lie as
fact to their friends, family, [and] repost to message boards, comment
threads, social media sites, which prop up the lie until the truth no
longe ...

If
the Seralini experiments are considered insufficient to demonstrate
harm, then those carried out by Monsanto cannot prove safety. This is
because, whatever its limitations, Seralini's study was conducted to
generally higher scientific standards than the studies underlying GM
food approvals.

Evidently,
Senator Klobuchar, your job is to shill for the biotech industry. But
just in case I’m wrong on this, please show us the tests that you so
heavily rely on that are conducted by the USDA, FDA and EPA on
genetically modified food (GMOs). You can’t, Senator, because they don’t
exist.

Citizens for Legitimate Government

ShareThisSandy
Hook: Ithaca Police Finish 'Active Shooter' Training on Day of Conn.
School Massacre --'It is one of those ironies which seem to abound.' 19
Dec 2012 It is one of those ironies which seem to abound. The Ithaca
Police Department finished training for handling situations like a sch
...

ShareThisAlleged
Minot AFB threat-caller arrested 22 Dec 2012 Schools at Minot AFB were
put on lock-down after a woman called into the Head Start preschool
there threatening to kill all the children Thursday morning. The
lock-downs were lifted by 12:30 p.m. after police had determined the
thr ...

ShareThisUS
tax dollars at work: Syria: Opposition Groups' Religious Police Patrol
Aleppo Countryside --The Syrian opposition groups that have taken
control of Aleppo's countryside are deploying a religious police force
to enforce new laws, such as barring women from driving and making
prayer ...

ShareThisFeds
raid gun store that sold weapon to shooter's mother after security
cameras capture man stealing deadly rifle - just four days before
massacre --ATF swoop on the store --Footage of Jordan Marsh removing the
50 calibre long gun --The AR15 was recovered in a duffel bag at the
Hartford ...

ShareThisThree
Men Appear in Court in Mysterious Terror Case 22 Dec 2012 Three men
appeared in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on Friday on charges
that they had trained to be suicide bombers with a Somali terrorist
group. The defendants, Ali Yasin Ahmed, 27, Mahdi Hashi, 23, and Mohamed
Yu ...

Daily Loaf

I
like to read — a lot. I could make lists counting the hundreds of books
that make great reads. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time and you
may not have the attention span for that. To keep it short and sweet,
here’s a list of five books that I feel add depth and meaning [...]

Victory
Brewing Company opened up fifteen years ago in Downingtown,
Pennsylvania, but only recently entered the Florida market. With such
beers as their highly touted Prima Pils and Storm King Stout, Victory
has earned a rightful place among the respected craft brewers in the
United States. St ...

Vaccine Resistance Movement

Typically
those living in the West are annually starved of the life-giving UVA
Ultra-violet light rays (which manifest as the steroid hormone Vitamin
D3) throughout the entire duration of Winter & early Spring. As a
result the Lymphocytes in their lungs cannot process Vitamin C & E,
whic ...

According
to a groundbreaking, controversial report, released in 1961 in the wake
of the Salk & Sabin Polio vaccine debacle, Medical researchers
identified that ‘all primary monkey kidney may contain one or more
latent viruses whose characteristic cytopathology becomes evident when
such tiss ...

‘The
prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment,
project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is
gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and
discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal
and ...

Due
to the complex nature of Autism Spectrum Disorder a formal definition
will be helpful in establishing the parameters of this report; while
differentiating the co-factors from other similar conditions. The
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , considered the standard of current
Medical Industry ...

‘Poliomyelitis
(polio) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It invades
the nervous system, and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours.
It can strike at any age, but affects mainly children under three
(over 50 percent of all cases). The virus enters the body throug ...

B.C. Preppers Network

A
few weeks back we received our new high-efficiency front loading LG
washer and dryer set and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed by them.
The set was only around $1000 (on sale) but I felt like I'd gone from a
Chevette to a Cadillac when compared to our old set. A cute little
luxur ...

Today
a fellow from our natural gas company came by to install a new
thermostat as part of the Peaksaver program that we signed up for. If
you haven't heard of Peaksaver, basically what it does is allow the
Ontario government electricity provider to turn off your central air
conditi ...

After being shocked a few months ago with a water bill of over $240 I
decided to do a few things to cut down on our water use We converted
our main toilet to a dual-flush and installed a water saving device on
the second (haven't switched it over to a dual yet). We also
installed a new ...

Our
family went strawberry picking this morning, it's a fun thing to do
once in a while and I think it's a good way to help our 3-year old
daughter realize where food comes from.
While my wife picked berries with our oldest I went for a walk around
the farm with our youngest in the stroller ...

I
received a flyer from Pioneer Solar in the mail the other day which
claims to help people get a solar system installed on their house, farm,
or business for free. Sounds too good to be true, right?
Well, like most things there's good and bad points about it and what
might be a good deal fo ...

Michael Yon

18
December 2012
All tracking begins with a start point. Start points can be found in
many ways.
The Israelis create track traps in soft soil that are impossible to
cross without leaving spoor. Israeli forces make heavy use of trackers.
Zoologists create similar track traps when ...

Butterflies
on suspected elephant dung: many signs are obvious.
10 December 2012
The British learned that employing local trackers can be disastrous.
Indigenous folks can be immensely talented at local tracking because
they are tuned intimately to their biowebs. Problems start fro ...

08
December 2012
US Navy image with GPS data embedded
Military photographers sometimes forget to turn off the camera GPS. The
Navy caption for this electric image is found on Flickr:
Lightning flashes near USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
U.S. 5TH FLEET AREA OF RESPONSIBILITY (Nov. 19, 2012) ...

07
December 2012
This video apparently was made by a helmet cam. It shows normal combat
in Afghanistan. Similar scenes have unfolded thousands of times during
the war. This underlines why so many people are serious about removing
the red crosses from Dustoff MEDEVAC heli ...

The Killing Train

I'm
listening to Duets for Abdelrazik, which my friend Stefan Christoff
sent to me as an early holiday present. It's mellow music considering
that it is the story of the thoroughly appalling mistreatment of someone
by an appalling system.
read more

December
19, 2012 Socialist Project Bullet article summarizing Haiti's New
Dictatorship
What constitutes a dictatorship? Haiti had an election in 2006, which
the popular candidate won. It had an election in 2011, which had one of
the lowest turnouts in recent history and which was subject to all ...

Every
time I give someone my email address, or tell them the title of my
blog, I get a raised eyebrow or a shocked look. Now, telling people the
title of my first book has the same effect. For that reason, I've set up
this blog to have "Why Killing Train?" and an explanation about the new
book v ...

When
Belgium realized in the 1950s that, given that France and Britain were
losing their African colonies, it would no longer be able to hold on to
Congo, it set about trying to guarantee continued control over the
strategic aspects of the economy, especially the mines. At first, it
sponsored it ...

You
don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that there's something
going on if a train crosses the US-Canada border 12 times back and forth
(24 times across the line) without unloading its cargo.

While
Burma’s quasi-civilian government has come up with yet another proposal
to hold talks with the Kachin Independence Army, the Burmese army is
trying to bring the recalcitrant Kachins to their knees once and for all

The
All Burma Students’ Democratic Front delegation visiting Burma met with
representatives from the 88 Generation Students in Rangoon to discuss
political strategies and hosting a potential convention

Telegraph - Climate Change

In
terms of fighting global warming right now, it is a failure. But by
finally sorting out the Kyoto Protocol and moving towards a global deal
where both rich and poor countries cut carbon, could the Doha Deal
finally move the world towards the treaty first hoped for in Copenhagen?

Jurist - Legal Research

[JURIST]
The Mannheim Regional Court in Germany ruled for Motorola Mobility, a
subsidiary of Google, against Microsoft [corporate websites] on Friday.
This was the fourth decision [FOSS Patents report] in a suit between
Motorola and Microsoft to be issued this year, all of which were
countersuit ...

[JURIST]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
[official website] on Friday condemned [press release] a draft law [bill
8711 materials, in Ukrainian] that would ban pro-gay "propaganda" in
Ukraine. The OHCHR said that the bill would be open to abuse and that it
violates ...

[JURIST]
The Queen's Bench Division [official website] on the High Court of
England and Wales ruled Friday that three elderly Kenyans can sue the
British government for torture they suffered while in detention under
the British Colonial Administration in the 1950s. Judge Richard McCombe
ruled th ...

[JURIST]
The High Court of England and Wales on Friday approved the extradition
of five terror suspects to the US. The court's decision comes a week
after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] gave
its final approval of the extradition, which it had initially approved
[JUR ...

[JURIST]
The High Court of Australia [official website] on Friday published its
reasons [text, PDF] for dismissing a lawsuit brought by several large
international tobacco companies challenging the labeling requirements of
the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 (TPP Act) [materials]. The court
ori ...

Bulletin of American Scientists - News

Tikun Olam

Time
Magazine has named the best photos of 2012 and the first one is an
image from Israel’s war against Gaza last month featuring a surviving
member of the massacred Dalou family tenderly kissing the limb of a dead
relative. I’ve also included the back story offered by the photograp
...

This
post began the way a good number of them do: an enterprising Israeli
noticed a newspaper article had been available online for an hour or a
day or a year and then, all of a sudden, it disappeared. What
happened? Who ya gonna call (to paraphrase Ghostbusters)? Who else?
So thanks to Davi ...

This
post began the way a good number of them do: an enterprising Israeli
noticed a newspaper article had been available online for an hour or a
day or a year and then, all of a sudden, it disappeared. What
happened? Who ya gonna call (to paraphrase Ghostbusters)? Who else?
So thanks to Davi ...

An
Israeli Knesset election committee voted to bar Israeli Palestinian MK
Haneen Zoabi from running in next month’s national election. The vote
was 19-9 on a motion presented by a Likud Knesset member. The committee
seeking to slice the baby clean in half, voted not to disqualify two
Isr ...

An
Israeli Knesset election committee voted to bar Israeli Palestinian MK
Haneen Zoabi from running in next month’s national election. The vote
was 19-9 on a motion presented by a Likud Knesset member. The committee
seeking to slice the baby clean in half, voted not to disqualify two
Isr ...

If Americans Knew

NPR's
reporter Linda Gradstein has done it again. She has managed to take a
"must report" story on Israeli-Palestinian relations -- the new report
by B'Tselem on the non-combatants, including children, killed by the
Israeli military during the Israeli attack on Gaza -- and report it in a
manner ...

Much
planning had gone into our family vacation in Israel-Palestine. We
could spare only the last two weeks of 2009, and so had developed an
uncompromising itinerary for each day, allowing a mere half-day to
recover from jet lag from our trip from California. After devoting most
of the first wee ...

In
your recent column in the New York Times, "Ten for the Next Ten," you
wrote: "I'll place my hopes on the possibility -- however remote at the
moment -- that...people in places filled with rage and despair, places
like the Palestinian territories, will in the days ahead find among them
their G ...

Noam
Chomsky has been called the US leading intellectual by pundits and even
some sectors of the mass media. He has a large audience throughout the
world especially in academic circles, in large part because of his
vocal criticism of US foreign policy and many of the injustices
resulting from t ...

David J. Gregory

http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=https://davidjgregory.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/donation-will-give-you-access-to-private-area/
As our private area grows with more and more data, it becomes more and
more desirable. A donation will give you access to this area where not
only will you ...

Big
news. President Obama is threatening to veto CISPA, the bill that could
give the government and big companies limitless powers to spy on us
online. The President has folded on a lot of things in the past, but
finally, yes finally, there is hope, the tide maybe changing, from the
GOP Corporat ...

http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=https://davidjgregory.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/the-eye-on-citrus-show/
Our latest radio show is up, talking about the GOP Forum held in
Crystal River this past Saturday, Jan 14, 2010. The two non-fiction
books relating the dark and illegal deeds of t ...

http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=https://davidjgregory.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/jesse-ventura-63-documents-the-government-does-not-want-you-to-read/
EyeOnCitrus.com is proud to announce that Jesse Ventura, newest book,
63 Documents The Government Doesn’t Want you to read, is availab ...

As
a Thanksgiving deadline nears for action by the powerful congressional
committee on deficit reduction, Bernie sounded an alarm over reports
that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may be cut. "The American
people have been very clear. They understand how important Social
Security, Med ...

Unsuitable Blog

The
Unsuitablog contains a huge range of posts from simple criticism to
investigation to downright in-your-face sabotage. It also has heaps of
advice on how to recognise and expose greenwash and the entire series of
Monthly Undermining Tasks which helped the book Underminers become a
reality. To ...

Four
years, and it feels like it. It would take a book to tell the story of
The Unsuitablog: all the work that has gone into it; the sleepless
nights wondering whether a stunt would come off or what the
repercussions of an exposure would be; the arm-aching pixel manipulation
in creating the hund ...

On
Monday 5th December, 2011, Bill McKibben, author and figurehead-leader
of 350.org wrote the following in the Daily Kos: You think OWS is
radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil
disobedience in DC in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We’re not
radical. Radica ...

There
is going to be a strike in Britain on Wednesday. The UK Government are
condemning it. This is starting to appear all over Facebook: When the
government decide we can have a day off for the royal wedding it doesn’t
damage the economy, but when the workers decide to strike for a day it
...

It
seems there is no depth to which the corporate world’s own favourite
NGO, WWF, will not sink. An article in this week’s Guardian was happy to
give WWF some free publicity, implying that the group actually give a
stuff about the wildlife they were apparently set up to protect (or s
...

Over
the weekend, I posted the following message on Twitter: “When a Muslim
commits terror, every Muslim in the world somehow shares responsibility.
When it’s a white Christian, he’s always a lone wolf.” I wasn’t
commenting on the tendency of commentators to use different words to de
...

Rep.
Peter King’s hearings looking into the “radicalization” of the American
Muslim community, and the suggestion that the community doesn’t
cooperate with law enforcement, was largely a waste of time and tax
dollars. The affair didn’t produce a single insight into the actual and
urgent issue of ...

One
of the more memorable scenes of the Egyptian revolution will surely be
that of ordinary Egyptian’s praying on Cairo’s Qasr al-Nil Bridge as
members of Egyptian state police direct their water cannons at them.
Truly a remarkable sight. via Al Jazeera Filed under: Middle East
Tagged: Al-Jazeer ...

The
Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg – one of the key proponents of the
disastrous invasion of Iraq – has some serious misgivings about the
fledgling pro-democracy movement that’s taken over the streets of Egypt.
“I support democratization, but,” he cautions, “the democratization we
saw in Gaza (cour ...

Idea Lab | Technology

Earlier
this month MapBox launched MapBox Satellite -- an aerial imagery
basemap of the world created entirely from public domain open data. Here
are a few examples of the maps we made with this public imagery.
Brawley, California | MapBox Satellite
Lago O'Higgins, Chile | MapBox Satel ...

The
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently opened up data on
more than 6,000 development projects implemented in 177 countries around
the world last year. This is a huge win for openness and transparency
in international development and project funding, and marks a release of
fundi ...

That's right: The world did not end when we launched Poderopedia's
Public Beta this Wednesday at 12:12 p.m. in the Chile time zone. So
please come in, check out the menu, and grab a bite of our editorial and
crowdsourced data journalism website that uses public data, semantic
web technology, a ...

History
is littered with awards and accolades for those tenacious journalists
who have dutifully discovered money that was spent on something it
shouldn't have been. Evidence of spending is often the ultimate proof of
wrongdoing. These stories have ranged from presidential campaigns
spending mon ...

This
is the first in a series of Q&As with Knight News Challenge winners
who've wrapped up their projects. Brian Boyer, currently the news
applications editor at NPR, is the project manager of PANDA Project, a
Knight News Challenge winner in 2011.
I recently interviewed Boyer about the pr ...

Cutting Edge News

A
study dating the age of more than 1 million single-letter variations in
the human DNA code reveals that most of these mutations are of recent
origin, evolutionarily speaking. These kinds of mutations change one
nucleotide â€“ an A, C, T or G â€“ in the DNA sequence. Over 86 percent
of the harm ...

Galactan
is a polymer of galactose, a six-carbon sugar that can be readily
fermented by yeast into ethanol and is a target of interest for
researchers in advanced biofuels produced from cellulosic biomass. Now
an international collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department
of Energy (DOE ...

The
debate over gun control in the United States has waxed and waned over
the years, stirred by a series of incidents involving mass killings by
gunmen in civilian settings. The killing of twenty schoolchildren in
Newtown, Ct. in December 2012 prompted a national discussion over gun
laws and ini ...

The
UN General Assembly is closing out 2012 in a blaze of glory. The UNGA
adopted nine resolutions against Israel in one day, December 18. They
are usefully summarized by Tom Gross in his web site, and I copy his
list of them at the bottom of this blog post. More information about
this imp ...

As
the first Christmas of World War I approached, Pope Benedict XV on Dec.
7, 1914, asked the leaders of all warring governments to agree to an
official cease-fire. He begged "that the guns may fall silent at least
upon the night the angels sang." Sadly, his plea was ignored by
government leader ...

CounterCurrents

By
Cynthia McKinney
It is with great disappointment that I receive the news from foreign
media publications and Libyan sources that our President now has 12,000
U.S. troops stationed in Malta and they are about to make their descent
into Libya

By
Franklin Lamb
The signs from Libya are that this country remains volatile and that
contrary to NATO claims that it put into place a new democratic Libya
that the predictable next chapter is starting to unfold that may bring
the end of the NTC before the coming June elections when it is sched ...

By
Peter Symonds
The Obama administration has reinforced the threat of American military
strikes against Iran by doubling the number of US aircraft carrier
groups in the region. The provocative decision heightens the danger of
war in the Persian Gulf as the US moves aggressively to impose a de ...

By Toby ORyan
Who, you might ask, is John C. Stennis? What are the boons and benefits
for humanity accomplished by this John C. Stennis such that he came to
have his name emblazoned on a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier?

Dear
Mr. Beck: I Shook Hands with the Antichrist Earlier this week, Michael
Lind wrote an article for Salon about the misplaced energy in demeaning
alarmists like Glenn Beck.1 Having friends and family who often revere
the inflammatory rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and others as a
light in ...

Dear
Mr. Beck: I Shook Hands with the Antichrist Earlier this week, Michael
Lind wrote an article for Salon about the misplaced energy in demeaning
alarmists like Glenn Beck.1 Having friends and family who often revere
the inflammatory rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and others as a
light in ...

A
friend, Frank Swift, that I met on my first journey has passed along
some great practical steps towards peace for the new year. Frank has
written a children’s book to help young people see an alternative to the
competition and forcefulness that can too easily get instilled in our
young p ...

Yid With Lid

Progressives
and the Liberal Media are bashing the NRA and it's CEO Wayne LaPierre
for the suggestion made in his speech today that trained armed guards be
placed in every school in the country. Many critics point to the fact
that Columbine High School had an armed guard during it's ...

Yesterday
Anti-gay statements made by Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel in 1998
were reported by the NY Times, and today he rushed out an apology.
The New York Times
reported that in 1998, James Hormel's nomination to be
ambassador to Luxembourg was
before the Senate, Hagel to ...

If you are like me you woke up one day and the "holiday season"
Christmas and New Year's became a trio, with the addition of something
called Kwanzaa. Oh sure there were rumblings of a new holiday, but
who would have thought that something invented by a Black separ ...

National
Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre spoke to reporters today about the
horror of Sandy Hook, and the hypocrisy of the media and politicians,
an indictment of Hollywood and the video game industry and offered the
NRA's suggestion for ending school violence-properly trained armed good
gu ...

During a recent speech in Boston Massachusetts, Attorney General Eric
Holder (showing up without his Fast and Furious weaponry) said that U.S.
election
officials should register eligible voters automatically and take steps
to reduce the long lines Americans encountered in national elections ...

The Real Agenda

By
LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 21, 2012 The Inter-American
Court of Human Rights ordered Costa Rica on Thursday to remove the legal
restrictions that the Central American country had imposed to prohibit
in vitro fertilization. A decade ago, a Costa Rican group of people
...

By
LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 21, 2012 The Security Council
of the U.N. unanimously approved Thursday a resolution authorizing the
deployment of an international military force (USAFRICOM) to rebuild the
Mali Army, which the U.N. says, was weakened after the coup of Marc ...

By
LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 20, 2012 While the United
States rightfully mourns the death of 20 innocent children who were
murdered last week in Newtown, Connecticut, few people realize that as
awful as those murders were, the man who has been given the Peace Prize
for ...

AFP
| DECEMBER 19, 2012 Belgium is considering a significant change to its
decade-old euthanasia law that would allow minors and Alzheimer’s
sufferers to seek permission to die. The proposed changes to the law
were submitted to parliament Tuesday by the Socialist party and are
likely ...

Wind Watch

Windmills
are not whirling along the southern shores of prince Edward County yet.
Late Thursday afternoon, the Ministry of Environment The Ministry of
Environment issued an approval for Gilead Power’s nine-turbine Ostrander
Point Project in Prince Edward County, but there will be at least one
ap ...

Campaigners
have hit out following the news that two rare birds of prey died after
striking wind turbines. RSPB Scotland revealed that an adult hen harrier
had been found dead at the 68-turbine Griffin windfarm in Highland
Perthshire earlier this year. A second raptor was discovered with a
broke ...

CARROLL
PLANTATION, Maine – Gary Campbell feels good about his chances. The
president of the Partnership for the Preservation of the Downeast Lakes
Watershed, Campbell said he hopes that First Wind’s second application
to build an industrial wind site atop Bowers Mountain will get rejected
like ...

A
state mandate that requires electric providers to use more renewable
and alternative sources in coming years will drive up the cost of
electricity for all Pennsylvanians by $16 billion over the next eight
years, according to a new study. Worse, the costs will fall hardest on
the state’s lowest ...

Massive
subsidies for the onshore wind industry have again been called into
question by a new study which found that the effective lifespan of
turbines is much shorter than has previously been claimed. The study –
which examined the performance of wind farms in the UK and Denmark –
says the econ ...

Tippers News

Three
men helped starve five children in Adelaide until they looked like they
had came from a famine-affected Third World country, a court has been
told.
Submitted by Rose NoFWDSPLZ to World | Note-it! | Add a Comment

The
three Chinese nationals who were jailed by an Accra Circuit Court for
transporting 10 Chinese girls into the country and engaging them in sex
trade have appealed against the verdict.
Submitted by Rose NoFWDSPLZ to World | Note-it! | Add a Comment

Coastal
Louisiana provides habitat to hundreds of wildlife species, including
sea turtles, migratory birds, and manatees. But unfortunately, right now
Louisiana is also experiencing the highest rate of land loss in the
United States
Submitted by Cher C. to Environment | Note- ...

The Freeman

Restrictive
immigration policies have long been associated with a variety of
economic problems. These include the diminished availability of foreign
talent, the inability of businesses to fill low-skilled agricultural and
service jobs typically scorned by legal residents, and reduced access
to t ...

I
am just now rereading Ludwig von Mises’s magnum opus, Human Action.
What a joy it is to get reacquainted with this masterful work and to use
it as a benchmark to gauge my own intellectual odyssey since first
reading it more than 40 years ago. Early on the reader encounters the
term “methodolo ...

Markets
are often rightly characterized as extraordinary problem solvers. Under
the right rules of the game (including private property, free exchange,
and the rule of law) people following their own self-interests can
coordinate their plans with one another more or less successfully,
generating ...

Dorothy
Whipple’s almost entirely forgotten novel High Wages is one of the most
compelling stories of personal initiative and entrepreneurship that I
have read. Left alone in the world with only fifty-two pounds in a
savings account, Jane Carter decides to look for work. By chance, she
arrives i ...

So
I’m a closet futurist. Being one, I sometimes find myself checking out
sites like Transhumanity.net. I recently came across an article there
that does a pretty good job of unpacking the difference between 20th
century science and 21st century science. One of the things I noticed
about 2 ...

Teaching Online Journalism

I’ve
been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve been preparing a syllabus
for an upper-level undergraduate journalism course that I will begin
teaching in January. I’ve been learning Python and starting to learn
about jQuery.
I’ve got some advantages: I learned HTML in ...

According to my WordPress stats, these are the posts with the most pageviews in the past 12 months:
Best social media tools for journalists (5,669)
Timelines in journalism: A closer look (4,365)
A few words about digital audio recorders (3,626)
How to shoot video interviews (3,465)
10 Rul ...

A
new translation of this guide is now available, thanks to the efforts
of Alessandra de Falco, a journalism professor at Universidade Federal
de São João del-Rei in Brazil. She uses the guide in her classes.
Em Português: Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency (PDF; 1 MB)
Also, I neglec ...

This
was the first U.S. presidential election in the post-Flash era. In
2008, data maps were made with Flash. Now the online mapmakers have
moved on to other technologies, largely using JavaScript. Here are three
examples, with a full view and a zoom of each:
WNYC Radio, New York:
LA Times ...

What do we mean when we say, “Data can tell a story,” or “Stories can be found in data”? (Click the image to view the project.)
Above: From the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Pew Research Center. (More info.)
Above: From OpenSlate, a market resea ...

The
GOP control of the House came despite more votes for Democrats. How did
that happen? Republicans used dark money to control redistricting in
many states, as the experience of North Carolina illustrates.
read more

There
are growing calls for better gun regulation in the wake of the Sandy
Hook elementary school massacre. But what are gun-control advocates up
against when they take on the National Rifle Association?
read more

Dec.
22 marks four years since a coal ash impoundment collapsed at a TVA
power plant in Tennessee, inundating a community and two rivers. As EPA
drags its feet over issuing federal coal ash rules, politicians backed
by industry interests are maneuvering to block the agency's ability to
protect p ...

Members
of the International Longshoremen’s Association honored a picket line
at the Port of Charleston that was protesting the arrival of a ship
bearing Walmart clothing made at a Bangladesh factory where over 100
workers died in a November fire. Dozens of truck drivers and other
workers also t ...

The
Telegraph's Investigations correspondent Duncan Gardham explains why
the murder in Brussels of ExxonMobil executive Nicholas Mockford has led
to suspicions his death may have been a professional assassination.

Ian Welsh

I’ve
waited a bit to weigh in on this, but I think it’s time. The two most
important things to understand are that gun control would reduce harm
significantly, and that gun control is a palliative for a sick culture.
The US does have more guns than anyone else, but countries like Fi ...

I’ve
waited a bit to weigh in on this, but I think it’s time. The two most
important things to understand are that gun control would reduce harm
significantly, and that gun control is a palliative for a sick culture.
The US does have more guns than anyone else, but countries like Fi ...

The
Reagan play, in the last period of high oil prices was this: crush the
economy and bring new sources of hydrocarbons online. This is also
Obama’s play: fracking and other unconventional hydrocarbon sources are
being ramped up massively, while austerity crushes resource demand.
China ...

The
Reagan play, in the last period of high oil prices was this: crush the
economy and bring new sources of hydrocarbons online. This is also
Obama’s play: fracking and other unconventional hydrocarbon sources are
being ramped up massively, while austerity crushes resource demand.
China ...

My
interview on Virtually Speaking is now up. If you missed it and would
like to listen, it can be found here. We talked about kindness in public
policy and about the economics and politics of global warming.

Reality Asserts Itself

My
colleague Malak Behrouznami recently returned from Juarez Mexico where
she grew up as a child. She as a wonderful heritage - her father is
Iranian and her Mother is Mexican. She went Juarez for family and
journalistic reasons. One of her objectives was to find out why Juarez
has become a terr ...

A
few months ago when shooting a documentary in the Middle East, we met
Zeina, a 13-year-old Palestinian living in a Beirut refugee camp. She
was traumatized as she watched the Israeli Gaza war on television. It
changed her life. She now thinks of revenge and cannot understand the
Israeli childr ...

I
listened to Glen Becks "Restoring Honor" speech today hoping to find
something of substance to write about. I found a stringing together of
such empty phrases it does not bear discussion. The more important
issue is why a man whose megalomania seems to have no bounds can become
...

Ban
Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, says of the flooding
in Pakistan "The world has never seen such a disaster. It's much beyond
anybody's imagination".
At least 20 million people have lost their homes, more than 1600 have
died, and disease and hunger will c ...

Many
economists and political analysts think the current recovery, as it's
being called, is a rather temporary phenomenon. Many expect the
recession to kick back in, and perhaps within a few years get much more
serious. What does that mean in terms of the future of the world economy
and worl ...

Great Beyond ( Nature )

Empty newsfeed.

new geography

At
this most familial time of the year, as recent events make us hold
our children even closer, we might want to consider what kinds of
environments are most conducive to having offspring. Alarm bells are
beginning to ring in policy circles over the decline of the U.S. birth
rate to a re ...

On
November 6, eight days after Hurricane Sandy’s surge waters flooded the
streets, I started volunteering in the Rockaways, where I stayed for
much of the next three weeks.
On that first day, I joined an ad hoc group of volunteers and took a
school bus full of supplies donated by my Brooklyn n ...

The
always-entertaining Freakonomics podcast last week devoted a full
episode to the emergence of management consulting firms in the U.S. The
podcast got our attention right away when Stephen Dubner rattled off
labor market statistics — something that always piques our interest —
for managem ...

p>There
has been a substantial reduction in both the extreme poverty rate and
the number of people living in extreme poverty since the early 1980s,
according to information from the World Bank poverty database. The World
Bank maintains data on developing world nations, which include both
low ...

While
it is still fashionable for politicians in both China and the United
States to prove their domestic leadership credentials by taking tough
stances against their nation’s chief economic rival, the results of
recent Pew surveys conducted in the two countries suggest that this
type ...

1.Illegal imports of genetically engineered maize into the EU?
2.Germany's Agriculture Minister must not allow undermining of zero tolerance through the back door!
---
---
1.Illegal imports of genetically engineered maize into the EU?
Testbiotech, 20 December 2012
http://testbiotech.org/en/node/ ...

Cryptogon

Via:
Guardian: Although it was intuitively obvious that the graph trumpeted
by AP as scary and incriminating of Iran’s nuclear program was actually a
farce, there is now new, overwhelming, very compelling scientific
evidence that is the case. Whether as victim or recklessly culpable
partic ...

I
wonder what happens when their targets/citizens run persistent VPNs
located in other countries? Via: Sydney Morning Herald: AUSTRALIAN law
enforcement and government agencies have sharply increased their access
without warrant to vast quantities of private telephone and internet
data, promptin ...

There’s
just one problem with this analogy. The Manhattan Project cost about
$25.8 billion (in 2012 dollars). This DOE effort is $120 million over
five years. That’s a noise level allocation of resources compared to The
Manhattan Project. Of course, if you need a façade to role out s ...

Really
quick, to let people know to please stop submitting this: Propaganda is
a pisstake by New Zealand filmmaker Slavko Martinov. The artifice of
the hoax was what grabbed the attention of mainstream media with this
thing. Here are some films that cover similar topics (and aren’t hoaxes)
...

Via:
Mother Jones: There’s an age-old tradition in Washington of making
unpopular announcements when no one’s listening—like, you know, the days
leading up to Thanksgiving. That’s when the Obama administration
sneaked a tasty dish to the genetically modified seed/pesticide indu ...

The Economic Collapse

What
a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a
"great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing
of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even
worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we
educate t ...

The
mainstream media continues to insist that the economy is "getting
better", but the poverty numbers for children and young people just
continue to explode. For example, did you know that the poverty rate
for families with a head of household under the age of 30 is a whopping
37 percent? Chi ...

Barack
Obama and John Boehner both seem absolutely determined to drive U.S.
government finances off a cliff. The mainstream media would have you
believe that there are vast ideological differences between the two of
them and that they are bitter enemies, but that is simply not the case.
Both o ...

When
are we finally going to admit that we have a very serious problem with
this generation of young men in America? We have failed them so
dramatically that it is hard to put it into words. We have raised an
entire generation of young males that don't know how to be men, and many
[...]

What
in the world is happening to America? I have written many articles
about how society is crumbling right in front of our eyes, but now it is
getting to the point where people are going to be afraid to go to
school or go shopping at the mall. Just consider what has happened over
[...]

Desertification

Please
read attentively the interesting article in IRIN News :
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97093/SAHEL-Malnourished-to-remain-above-one-million-in-2013
Probably you may underscore the following : According to the Sahel
regional strategy and despite the good rains and good harvest across the
S ...

Read
at :
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97093/SAHEL-Malnourished-to-remain-above-one-million-in-2013
DAKAR, 20 December 2012 (IRIN) – Despite good rains across much of the
Sahel this year, 1.4 million children are expected to be malnourished –
up from one million in 2012, according ...

Read
at :
http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/12/qa-mutant-fruit-trees-to-grow-in-saline-soils-in-cuba/
Q&A: Mutant Fruit Trees to Grow in Saline Soils in Cuba By Ivet
González Many people in Cuba have avocado trees in their yards, for
family consumption. Avocado sapling grown in a cup (bottom part ...

Read
at : Google Alerts
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/m/xinjiang/urumqi_toutunhe/2012-12/20/content_16036578.htm
Cooperation agreement for controlling desertification in western China
By Zhou Yuanyuan ( chinadaily.com.cn ) There was a signing ceremony for a
framework agreement in Toutunhe distric ...

The Paper Trail

Empty newsfeed.

backofthebook.ca

The
Idle No More movement approached critical mass yesterday, as tens of
thousands of First Nations people and their supporters rallied across
Canada, and as far afield as New Mexico and Ukraine. Many of the
peaceful protests, featuring round dances and drumming, struck at the
very heart of the ...

By
David@Sixthestate.net I have to say, it’s pretty depressing that not
one of the many, many professional journalists in Canada is literate
enough to read a government report. To their credit, some are trying.
But they also had a whole press briefing slash lock-up slash sleazy
play-time with th ...

By
Montreal Simon I was glad to see Obama visit the latest community in
America to be shattered by gun violence. And I was happy to hear him say
this. “We can’t tolerate this any more. These tragedies must end. And
to end them, we must change.” So maybe all the poor little chil ...

By
Mark Leiren-Young I’ve figured out Gary Bettman’s grand master plan for
the NHL. He’s decided to run it without players. No players means no
games. No games means no overhead, no pesky salaries, no arena rentals,
no worrying whether superstars get concussed, no superstars, and, best
of all, n ...

By
Frank Moher J-Source.ca has a melancholy wrap-up story on the case of
Jill Wiznoski and the displeased MP — melancholy because I expect this
is the last we’ll hear of a matter that should have received a lot more
national press attention than it did. Wiznoski, you will remember, ...

libcom

Our friend Oleg is threatened with 5 years in
prison, as he is facing charges according to statutes 213 (hooliganism)
and 116 parts 2a, 2b (battery) of Russian criminal codex. This is
already second such case against Oleg, first time he was charged 3 years
...

547014_449003295160537_694289372_n.jpg
On 12 December 2012, the workers at Careggi
hospital in Florence went on strike against the proposal by the company,
made unilaterally and signed by the mainstre ...

Two new short films with English subtitles
dedicated to Belarusian anarchist political prisoners have been released
as part of the Belarusian series "Chronicles of the times of courts",
one is dedicated to Ihar Alinevich and the other to Mikalaj ...

riskypopcorn.jpg
Solidarity with the Workers of Natais popcorn
factory in France! Exposed to hazardous substances, forced to work on
precarious conditions, the workers tried to fight back. On Thursday ...

Free Range International

This
will be the last post I write for the FRI blog. If this is the first
time you have seen this blog stop reading this right now and go back to
October 2011 in the archives section because those are some of the best
posts I ever wrote about Afghanistan. Or go to the [...]

Our
little posse made it out of Afghanistan without any dramas. My brother
Tim left with me because The Bot had made it perfectly clear that his
IED hit from the year before had made him completely unstable and a big
pain in his ass. We went to London again and both my brother and [...]

Editors
note: Be sure to start this series from the beginning (Dalton Thomas
Comes Home) so it makes sense. We will try to get more posts up sooner
than we have been lately but Dalton is, to be honest, not doing as well
as we hoped . Baba Tim is also banged up again and [...]

Editors
Note: It is important for first time readers to start this story from
the beginning. This is a (mostly) fictional account by my brother,
Dalton Thomas Lynch, who is using the pen as therapy as he adjusts to
living a normal life back in the states. Any donations received by the
FRI bl ...

Dalton
continues to heal himself using creative writing as his vehicle for
change. Any donations our loyal readers are able to spare for this
cracking tale will go directly to Dalton. For the record, I (Baba T)
did not say “Vet or Ventilate” and insist it was “If we can&#8217
...

The Story Behind the Story

Just
when you thought it couldn’t get any stranger, we now have “Dr.”
Psycho-shrink Rima Laibow declaring in a PUBLIC VIDEO that “she is
Sandy-Hook Shooter Adam Lanza’s Doctor”. Not only that, Laibow the
wacko tells you with a straight face that she “he ...

Today,
Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012 there will be a very public memorial service
for 6 year old Emilie here in my home town of Ogden, Utah. Emilie, a
precocious and PRECIOUS blue-eyed, blonde sweetheart gunned down with 19
other classmates in Newtown, Ct. last Friday has become the face of the
Sandy ...

Genetic
researchers have long ignored the majority of the human DNA strand,
calling it “Junk” simply because it doesn’t relate to the color of your
skin or eyes – and because it doesn’t dissect proteins. The fact is,
the “Junk” DNA makes up over 90% of ...

Genetic
researchers have long ignored the majority of the human DNA strand,
calling it “Junk” simply because it doesn’t relate to the color of your
skin or eyes – and because it doesn’t dissect proteins. The fact is,
the “Junk” DNA makes up over 90% of ...

I’ve
been lecturing about the “CIA’s Best Kept Secret” for years. This
godless, Edomite super-technology is closely tied to the “Elite’s”
TRANSHUMANISM agenda – where God’s masterpiece of creation called the
human DNA becomes literally int ...

du la bab - Now is the Time

There’s
a great Story from the New York Times / International Herald and
Tribune about a 28 year old product designer from Luxembourg attempting
to live a carbon neutral life in Barcelona, Spain. Her story is at
certainly inspiring, although sometimes uncomfortable to read about… who
...

Here’s
a great video from a Cambridge University Physicist David Mackay. He’s
discussing practical ways of measuring domestic power consumption, ways
of producing energy, and he debate about replacing traditional fossil
fuels based methods of producing electricity with more sensible ...

Peter
sits down with Retired Major General Amos Yadlin, Director of the
Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, to
discuss Iran, Syria, and continuing instability in the Middle East.

Scotts Contracting

Table
of Contents for the Green Build Rehab of a 4 Family Investment Property
in St Louis General Contractor on Project: Scotts Contracting, St Louis
Renewable Energy How we brought the Old Western – Old South St Louis
Architecture- Decor and Feel into a Modern Day Apartment- Benton Gut
...

Reblogged
from CBS St. Louis: ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Congratulations to at least
three Missouri Couples who had babies on yesterday’s special date:
12/12/12. Mehlville couple Kelly and Elias Ford gave birth to a son.
Elias Ford Junior was born by C-section at St. Anthony’s Medical Cente
...

How
Alternative Renewable Energy Helps Fuel the Economy and Create Green
Jobs Alternative energy is here to stay. With new advances in energy
comes new industries, and with that comes new jobs. Simply put, lots of
jobs are created every month in the green industry. With incentives from
the gover ...

More
than $100 million of the rate increase will go to pay for higher fuel
costs, much of it for coal hauled by rail to Missouri power plants from
sprawling mines in Wyoming. PSC approves $260 million Ameren rate
increase 8 Print Email Ameren headquarters in St. Louis. Photo courtesy
of Am ...

If
your Water Main is leaking it can cost you Thousands of Dollars over
the year. Safety First-when there are open holes in a sidewalk A leaking
water main can cost a building owner thousands in water bills in St
Louis and can cause damage to the Rock Foundation Walls and Footings-
which will al ...

Proskauer
Rose and SJ Berwin said Friday they had decided against merging,
putting to an end months of speculation about a possible trans-Atlantic
tie-up between the two law firms. The firms in a joint statement said
"we recognized that the timetable necessary to reach the agreements that
would ...

Iranian.com

French lawmakers invited the head of a previously shunned Iranian
dissident group to parliament on Wednesday, aiming to help it gain
credibility as a viable opposition to Tehran's government.
read more

The
latest image from DigitalGlobe clearly showing the new blue roofing of
the two major buildings, new equipment and materials and the rows of
earth piles. Numerous cars present at the site suggest a considerable
level of activity at the site.

Most Revolutionary Act

Daniel Ellsberg
“When all who are honestly mistaken hear the truth, they will either
quit being mistaken or cease being honest.” ~Anonymous~ Vietnam
whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has a recent article in the Huffington
Post about a new group he has started with journalists Glenn Gr ...

Average Fox News viewer According to the December 12 Washington’s Blog,
the average Fox News viewer is 65, the average CNN viewer 63 and the
average MSNBC viewer 59. In 2010 The Pew Research Center’s biennial
consumption survey revealed the average age of a regular evening news
vie ...

As activists warned when cops were first authorized to carry tasers,
police aren’t restricting their use to situations in which their own
lives are at risk. They are using them sadistically, punitively and
unconstitutionally when civilians fail to obediently comply with their
orders. ...

photo credit LiveNews
(This is a follow-up of two previous posts on the secret “free” trade
treaty the Obama administration is negotiation: Will the RCEP kill the
TPP and Why You Never Hear of Either One and Will China Kill the TPP?)
The Auckland round of Transpacific Partnership ...

When
President Franklin D. Roosevelt made plans to run for a third term in
1940 he decided to drop conservative Vice President John Nance Garner
from the ticket, both because Garner disapproved of Roosevelt running
again and Garner's opposition to much of the New Deal. Instead Roosevelt
chose Se ...

By
Walt De Vries
From 1961 through 1967, Walt De Vries served George Romney as a campaign
strategist during Romney's terms as Michigan governor; heading campaign
research and strategy for three campaigns and as executive assistant in
the office of the governor. He is co-author, with Lance Tarra ...

From
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq
War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn:
In Rome on the afternoon of October 7…Elisabetta Burba, an investigative
reporter for Panorama, a Milan-based newsmagazine owned by conservative
Italian Prime Minister Sil ...

\Kasaba
throws spit on cameraMUMBAI: Ajmal Kasaba webcam spit on Tuesday during
a hearing in the Bombay High Court for confirmation of the death
penalty, which led the court strictly tell him to behave properly.
Judjes a warning when they Kasaba altercation with the police and spit
at the camera ...

For
SMB News Twin bombing at Shah Ghazi’s shrine kills 8 KARACHI: Eight
people including two children were killed and over 65 others suffered
injuries when two suicide bombers blew themselves up outside Abdullah
Shah Ghazi’s shrine in Clifton, official sources said here Thursday. Two
heads, beli ...

For
SMB News Musharraf seeks Pak nation’s apology for ‘mistakes’ LONDON:
Former president Gen. (Retd.) Pervez Musharraf Friday admitted that
political mistakes were committed in the twilight years of his regime
and sought apology from Pakistani nation for the same. “These mistakes
caused damage ...

Energy Collective

"On
reflection, I can’t help but be reminded of the important role the NRC
performs for the nation; the work we have underway to further enhance
reactor safety; and the renewed importance of ensuring no accident like
this happens in the United States. I want to be sure that we continue to
t ...

This
year brought staggering weather extremes, record loss of Arctic ice and
a growing body of scientific analysis linking the two. Those extremes,
plus Superstorm Sandy, raised public concern about the immediate threat
posed by climate change, providing a palpable debunking of the
(mistaken) be ...

A
new report released this week by the Legislative Analyst’s Office
recommends that the California Legislature develop a comprehensive
strategy for meeting the state’s energy efficiency and alternative
energy goals. Included in the report are recommendations for the state
to specify its energy e ...

The
SF Energy Co-op has found a way to make the benefits of green energy
available to anyone, through the power of collective investment and
organization. As Wynns puts it, “Say it costs $20K to put solar on your
roof, but you can’t do that, for whatever reason. So you go to your
neighbor and sa ...

Good
news today from Brussels, as the European Community holds firm and
rejects last-minute pressure from by Daimler, maker of Mercedes-Benz, to
block the introduction of a climate-friendly refrigerant in car air
conditioners. As I’ve written here and here, the world auto industry is
on the ver ...

EU Times

“The
fear is what’s given us the reason to do this,” insisted Todd Stovall,
the head functionary of the paramilitary occupation force afflicting
Paragould, Arkansas, as he announced that the city would be placed under
martial law for the supposed purpose of deterring crime. “Once I have
stats an ...

Flavoured
cigarettes, including menthol, strawberry, or vanilla, are set to be
banned in the European Union. The EU health commissioner also wants to
make pictorial warnings occupy 75 per cent of the pack. ­The draft
legislation on measures to curb smoking were unveiled on Wednesday.
However, th ...

The
snail helps regenerate human skin Recent research shows that snail
saliva may have antioxidant and regenerative effects on human skin.
According to a study by scientists at the Autonomous University of
Madrid, snail saliva could be used in therapies to regenerate damaged
skin tissues. Recent ...

The
Spanish parliament has adopted a 39-billion-euro (52-billion-US dollar)
austerity package as the debt-ridden eurozone country battles to reduce
its budget deficit. On Thursday, the lawmakers voted for the cuts in
the 2013 budget, which slashes spending for health care and education,
and redu ...

Astronomers
have discovered that the closest Sun-like star, Tau Ceti, is orbited by
five planets, one of which is in the “habitable range”. If its
existence is confirmed, the planet could be the closest potentially
life-harboring world to our own. Tau Ceti, twelve light years away,
belongs to th ...

Stonecipher News

From
Chris Stonecipher's
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifFactoidz
page: It is important to be value neutral
wihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifth clients to avoid harm by mixing
your own values and beliefs with clients that is potentially damaging
to th ...

With
the rising increase in teen violence, much research has been directed
to determine if video games, violent television shows and other
electronic media is directly related. Gentile, D.A. & Anderson C.A
(2003) has done extensive research in which supports the theory that
video games lead to v ...

Liquida : Worldwide News & Opinion

The NRA is still facing stinging criticism for remarks this week on the
shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, with a
growing number of groups and individuals condemning a proposal to have
armed police officers in schools. In the first public statement since
shutting ...

(CNN) - It was clear from House Speaker John Boehner's weekly address
on Saturday that the fiscal cliff negotiations with President Barack
Obama weren't going anywhere soon. Both men left Washington on Friday,
leaving the looming spending cuts and tax increases for after Christmas.
They left th ...

The Atlanta Hawks hope to get back on track Saturday night when they
take on the surprising Chicago Bulls at Philips Arena. Atlanta has lost
two straight and three of four while the Bulls come in having won two
straight. The Atlanta Hawks are searching for answers at both ends of
the floor afte ...

The latest Hollywood news reports that ASHTON KUTCHER has filed for
divorce from his estranged wife, DEMI MOORE , after over a year of
separation. That’s right. Let’s get it over with, shall we? Ashton
Kutcher now wants to make his split from Demi Moore official, after
being married for 7 years ...

Groklaw

When
corporate interests and consumer interests diverge, courts should not
automatically favor the former over the latter. The judicial habit of
genuflecting before corporate assertions of confidentiality and trade
secrets makes no sense in an era of patent lawsuits that are filed
promiscuously ...

A
Patent Troll or Non-Practicing Entity by the name of Princeton Digital
Image Corporation has been assigned a 1987 patent by General Electric
that they're using to sue Apple with. In the last fifteen months, the
company has also sued HP, Intel, Facebook, Eastman Kodak, Canon and
others.
Pri ...

When
corporate interests and consumer interests diverge, courts should not
automatically favor the former over the latter. The judicial habit of
genuflecting before corporate assertions of confidentiality and trade
secrets makes no sense in an era of patent lawsuits that are filed
promiscuously ...

Your
editor has frequently written that, while Android is a great system
that has been highly beneficial to the cause of open mobile devices, it
would be awfully nice to have a viable, free-software alternative. Every
month that goes by makes it harder for any such alternative system to
establis ...

Posner's
first-hand experiences with the patent system helped to turn him into a
harsh critic. "Our patent law is a failed system," he declared on
Wednesday. He cited a laundry list of problems, including an
under-staffed and poorly managed patent office and expert witnesses
whose credibility is ...

Politics in the Zeros

A
comment on a NY Times article about the Newtown shooter said, I’m a
professor in a major US university and in many countries they would just
assume the shooter was possessed and needed spiritual help, which is
some Americans generally don’t understand.Like the violence of the drug
...

Security
expert Bruce Schneier frequently says that our “solution” to security
threats is simply to react to whatever the last threat was. Someone
tried to turn their shoes into a bomb well then, make travelers take off
their shoes at security checkpoints. This does little to make an ...

David
Gergen eloquently expresses what many of us have been thinking, that
our country is going off the deep end and our supposed leaders appear
incapable of governing. Our Congress may be the most incompetent and
mindlessly partisan ever. Obama isn’t much better. They have
accomplished li ...

TVNZ - Top Stories

Just World News

Hi,
everyone! We have just six days to go in our online fundraiser for
Gareth Porter's very important planned book Manufactured Crisis: The
Secret History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare. We've just topped getting
pledges for 2/3 of the $10,000 we need for this.
Can you do anything to help us get ...

Plenty
of western commentators have asserted that the attention that
participants in the Arab Spring have been paying to governance issues in
their own countries means that somehow they no longer really care about
Palestine. (A few people, most notably As'ad Abou-Khalil, have
challenged that as ...

Quick!
Someone help free Pres. Obama from the kidnappers who are holding him
hostage! The kidnappers in question are, of course, our old friends from
the Israel Lobby, who have succeeded so thoroughly in their
decades-long campaign to stuff the whole of the U.S. foreign-policy
establishment with ...

1.
Some prominent Israelis are calling for a 'Dahiyeh' operation against
Gaza.
I just watched this clip from a news/discussion program on Israel's
Channel 2. In it, "military analyst" Roni Daniel openly calls for the
implementation of a "Dahiyeh" operation ("like in Beirut"), against
Gaza. Dahi ...

As
some JWN readers know, twelve days ago I launched an online fundraising
campaign to support the writing and publication of one of my company's
most important books for 2013, a book by award-winning investigative
reporter Gareth Porter that exposes how the U.S. and Israel have
"manufactured" t ...

The
Report of the Finance & Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank’s
Monetary Policy Statement for December 2012 is now public and contains
the following gem on bank profitability late in 2012 (from page 9):
Recent data released by the Reserve Bank updated information it had
provided to u ...

The
murky green water at the Matakana Wharf looked rather less inviting
than the array of delicious artisan produce at the nearby Matakana
Market. But we were paddling, not swimming, and the Auckland Council’s
most recent (2011) monitoring rates the river as having “good” water
quality, rather t ...

Education
Minister Missing in inaction Its not every day that the highest
profile public servant, the chief executive of one of our biggest
Government departments, stands down, a week before Christmas, and after
a year in which her department was almost never out of the spotlight,
for all the ...

J Kozy

What goes on in America's schools is essentially identical to what goes on in the Madrassas of
the Muslim world. In both, orthodox beliefs are taught as truth and critical examination is discouraged. Two worlds
clash in loggerheads.

History is not always progressive; there have been many instances of extensive regression. Immoral
institutions can more easily become worse than better. When the Capitalists have accumulated all the wealth there is
and have the means to take away any that is subsequently created, what will ...

The Supreme Court of the United States is an institution that has failed in every possible way. It is
notorious for having issued iniquitous opinions; it has not only failed to resolve but has exacerbated conflicts; and it
has consistently negated the ideals the founding fathers wrote into t ...

The economy is merely a sum of money, not practices that sustain the oikos, and the money that makes
up the sum is equally valued whether it results from virtuous or vicious, good or bad, constructive or destructive,
humane or inhumane, legal or illegal, beneficent or malevolent practices. A ...

Governments have never existed to solve problems domestic or international. Governments and their
institutions exist merely to further and secure the interests of favored groups, but We the People are never the favored
group.

Dr. Mercola Natural Health

By
Dr. Mercola
There can be little doubt that we're in a health care crisis of massive
proportions. The Affordable Health Care Act is the proposed solution,
but to any person aware of the facts, it should be evident that
so-called "ObamaCare" is NOT a viable solution.
Now that President Obam ...

By
Dr. Mercola
Many have studied the reasons for longevity. Why do some people live
longer than others? Is it genetics? Is it culture, or perhaps lifestyle?
James Smith, a health economist at the RAND Corporation, delved into the
prevailing mystery of why some groups of people live longer t ...

By
Dr. Mercola
Diabetes has increased more than 700 percent in the last 50 years.
Today, more than one in four Americans are either pre-diabetic or have
full-blown diabetes.
The conventional treatment route includes a variety of diabetes drugs,
some of which have been found to do far more h ...

By
Dr. Mercola
The United States uses nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics annually
in food production. Livestock antibiotic use accounts for 80 percent of
the total antibiotics sold in the US, and unnecessary use of antibiotics
in food animals (cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys) is a majo ...

Jean-François
Lisée is the Parti Québécois cabinet minister responsible for liaison
with the anglophone community. Also minister for the Montreal region and
for international relations, he is writing in response to an open
letter to him published on Saturday's Opinion page by ...

Jean-François
Lisée is the Parti Québécois cabinet minister responsible for liaison
with the anglophone community. Also minister for the Montreal region and
for international relations, he is writing in response to an open
letter to him published on Saturday's Opinion page by ...

The
July 23 Letter of the Day ("An administration that's sucking the life
out of the Plateau," July 23) from Plateau Mont Royal resident Marion
Bialek, and a response from Projet Montréal vouncillor Alex Norris drew
lots of comment from readers at montrealgazette.com/opinion.

Food World Order

Create
The Problem, Then Solve It
from brasschecktv.com: With much fan fare, the UN recently announced a
program to "rid Haiti of cholera." Just one problem, until UN troops
infected with the disease came to Haiti recently, there was no cholera
reported there.

from stratrisks.com: It should be fairly obvious why, all technological
considerations aside, there has been much more research into letting
machines extract our thoughts, rather than insert them. Mind reading is a
scary-enough concept all on its own — but mindwriting? It calls to mind
the hac ...

from mercola.com: Grist Magazine started me off on this list by
providing the first five packaged foods that are completely unnecessary,
as making them at home is not only simple, but far healthier and more
inexpensive. I added five more to Jane Mountain's list, for a total of
10. Canned ...

CrusadeWatch

source:
Huffington Post, 8/24/2011
Michael Mungai
Co-founder, Dagoretti 4 Kids
I grew up in the hovels of Dagoretti, an impoverished suburb in the
outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. Raised by an unemployed single mother, my
two siblings and I would take turns missing school to babysit our ...

source:
Daijiworld, Aug 29, 2011
Puttur, Aug 29: Four persons, reportedly belonging to a Christian sect,
were handed over to the police by the residents of Boodujal of Nedle
village near Uppinangady on Sunday August 28. The locals, including some
dalits, accused K J Kunhimonu (30) from Mun ...

source:
Deccan chronicle, July 13, 2011
Its a well-documented fact that people adopt aspects of other cultures
around them. The churches in Andhra Pradesh are following this custom
and Indianising some of practices. At St Andrews Orthodox Church, West
Marredpally, a Dwaja Stambam has been ...

source: Bangalore Mirror, June 17, 2011
In her police complaint, Priyalatha has charged
Shantaraju, pastor of Bethel Church and Bethel Student Centre, with
having sex with young girls and getting them to abort
S Shyam Prasad

Whole Truth Coalition

COTO
Report and Megan ‘Verb’ Kargher are proud to present Vox Populi,
Methods of Manipulation. It has become increasingly evident that large
portions of the planet are descending with alarming speed into Orwellian
police states. What is the New World Order and what are their plans fo
...

“Wirral Council is taking Roger Hayes to Birkenhead county court for non-payment of council tax.
Mr Hayes, chairman of The British Constitution Group, claims the council tax is illegal and imposed without his consent.
His stand has won support from all over the country, and demonstrators t ...

COTO
Report and Megan Kargher are pleased to bring you a special two day
interview with Freeman of freemantv, the freeman perspective and the
free zone
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freemantv…
http://thefreemanperspective.blogspot…
http://freemantv.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O ...

The Economic Collapse

What
a year 2012 has been! The mainstream media continues to tell us what a
"great job" the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing
of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even
worse for the poor and the middle class. It is imperative that we
educate t ...

The
mainstream media continues to insist that the economy is "getting
better", but the poverty numbers for children and young people just
continue to explode. For example, did you know that the poverty rate
for families with a head of household under the age of 30 is a whopping
37 percent? Chi ...

Barack
Obama and John Boehner both seem absolutely determined to drive U.S.
government finances off a cliff. The mainstream media would have you
believe that there are vast ideological differences between the two of
them and that they are bitter enemies, but that is simply not the case.
Both o ...

When
are we finally going to admit that we have a very serious problem with
this generation of young men in America? We have failed them so
dramatically that it is hard to put it into words. We have raised an
entire generation of young males that don't know how to be men, and many
[...]

What
in the world is happening to America? I have written many articles
about how society is crumbling right in front of our eyes, but now it is
getting to the point where people are going to be afraid to go to
school or go shopping at the mall. Just consider what has happened over
[...]

The Talking Clock

Just
remember that death is not the end...
So, whilst The Talking Clock is - for now at least - mothballed, the
many friends and regular readers who are "awake" might want to join me
in my little sidestep venture:
http://conspiracywatch.blogspot.co.uk/
Blogrolls need to be added and the ...

On
the day that the BEST blogger in the blogosphere - Captain Ranty - has
posted to announce 'end of transmission' (though not for the first
time)...
...having mulled over what Captain Ranty has to say, rather than
replying to the above linked blogpost in comments or via 140 characters
on Twi ...

Here
are the highlights of the European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment
Decision) Bill, Second Reading debate which took place in the House of
Commons yesterday.
Bill Cash MP
Plainly, the implosion in Europe does affect us, and this failed attempt
to put a sticking plaster on an increasi ...

Archbishop
Desmond Tutu is all over the world's media for boldly coming out in
public with a call for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to stand trial at
the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes over the
invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Part of Tutu's thinking ...

As
is now a yearly thing for this blog, a few images of the tributes left
at Kensington Palace for the fifteenth anniversary of Diana's death.
Those of our readers who come here as fellow Diana admirers are more
than welcome to save the images - links back greatly appreciated. Click
on the th ...

The
GOP control of the House came despite more votes for Democrats. How did
that happen? Republicans used dark money to control redistricting in
many states, as the experience of North Carolina illustrates.
read more

There
are growing calls for better gun regulation in the wake of the Sandy
Hook elementary school massacre. But what are gun-control advocates up
against when they take on the National Rifle Association?
read more

Dec.
22 marks four years since a coal ash impoundment collapsed at a TVA
power plant in Tennessee, inundating a community and two rivers. As EPA
drags its feet over issuing federal coal ash rules, politicians backed
by industry interests are maneuvering to block the agency's ability to
protect p ...

Members
of the International Longshoremen’s Association honored a picket line
at the Port of Charleston that was protesting the arrival of a ship
bearing Walmart clothing made at a Bangladesh factory where over 100
workers died in a November fire. Dozens of truck drivers and other
workers also t ...

CenterLine

Karen
Greenberg, executive director of NYU Law’s Center on Law and Security
(CLS), announced she is leaving to pursue other career opportunities.
Greenberg’s tenure as executive director began with the founding of the
Center in 2003. Under her stewardship, CLS … Continue reading →

Today’s
Terrorism News post will be the last one for the summer. Along with the
staff here at the Center on Law and Security, and with particular
thanks to The Soufan Group for its generous support and to Carolyn
O’Hara … Continue reading →

In
Association with The Soufan Group At Radicalization Hearing, Rep. King
Says al Shabab Poses Threat Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) held a third
congressional hearing on Islamic radicalization in the United States
Wednesday, this one focused on the threat of … Continue reading →

In
Association with The Soufan Group Four Indicted for Drug Trafficking to
Benefit Terrorism Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed indictments
Tuesday against four men they say conspired to sell drugs and buy
weapons for Hezbollah and the Taliban in … Continue reading →

In
Association with The Soufan Group In Arkansas, Man Accused of Killing
Soldier Strikes Plea Deal A man on trial for shooting two U.S. soldiers,
one of whom was killed, outside of a military recruiting station in
2009 reached a … Continue reading →

Tech Drive In

Nobody in their right minds would have imagined this an year ago. An
officially supported Steam client for Linux? Are you kidding me? Well it
just happened and the official Steam client for Linux is open to
public. We should especially thank Microsoft for shooting its own feet
with their new A ...

Eufloria HD should definitely be one the best games for Android in 2012.
It is an incredibly addictive and stylish ambient strategy game. And
like most other extremely popular games in Google Play Store, Eufloria
HD is criminally simple with almost zero learning curve involved.
...

It is not far-fetched to say, open source and its poster child, Linux,
is going through a golden period. The emergence of internet has a lot to
do with the popularisation of open source way of thinking. But in the
world of Windows and Macs, what makes Linux tick? Redhat was the first
to expl ...

Ever wondered what happened to all those mind numbing animations and
effects in older Ubuntu releases running GNOME 2.x? We used to conduct
Linux installation fests during our college days and showing off Compiz
Fusion's capabilities was a major highlight during every such event. But
with the ...

Reditr is a multi-column Reddit client for desktops. It currently
supports Ubuntu, Mac, Windows and Google Chrome platforms. When it was
first announced few months back, it created a lot of excitement,
especially among Linux folks. But the initial Reditr Alpha release
disappointed quite a few. ...

Case About Bird Flu

Sipping
some wine to mourn – or perhaps to celebrate? – my leaving Austria, one
of my elderly neighbours mentioned the resignation speech of Austrian
Chancellor Kurt Schusschnig in 1938, which ended with the words “May God
protect Austria.” Every Austrian knows what happened after the
Annexatio ...

Sipping
some wine to mourn – or perhaps to celebrate? – my leaving Austria, one
of my elderly neighbours mentioned the resignation speech of Austrian
Chancellor Kurt Schusschnig in 1938, which ended with the words “May God
protect Austria.” Every Austrian knows what happened after the
Annexatio ...

You
read about it on this blog first: Globalist and Magna chief Frank
Stronach has been trying to recruit people for a new „false flag“
opposition party as the euro crisis escalates. Stronach even rang the
solictor handling the sale of my flat in Vienna and offered him a job as
Justice Minister. ...

You
read about it on this blog first: Globalist and Magna chief Frank
Stronach has been trying to recruit people for a new „false flag“
opposition party as the euro crisis escalates. Stronach even rang the
solictor handling the sale of my flat in Vienna and offered him a job as
Justice Minister. ...

At
a time of crisis, terror and tyranny, Claus von Stauffenberg seized
the initiative and tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the
Nazi regime in a coup in July, 1944. As such, he is an example to us all
today. The mass impoverishment of people by the fractional reserve
banking scam ...

Invisible Opportunity

ROCKWELL:
You know, it shows how important the whole vaccination program is to
the regime. I remember some time ago hearing on NPR, one of the unlucky
instances when I was listening to NPR, and they were saying, well, you
know, we’ve known for a long time that hicks and rubes and stupid pe ...

By
Visible Well… tomorrow is the day; that long awaited day and today
seems like any other day, before some ordinary day to follow. Yesterday I
was sitting somewhere, I forget where and a flash of images came into
my head. This happens to me a lot. Things come out of nowhere, which is
actu ...

Tom
McKay December 18, 2012 “Did we just kill a kid?” Brandon Bryant, a
drone operator working for the Air Force, realized aloud. “Yeah, I guess
that was a kid,” another pilot replied. “No. That was a dog,” someone
answered via computer from a distant military ...

by
chris Talking Points Memo – by EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO Tennessee has
emerged this week as a center of the “the answer is more guns in
schools” sentiment following the Newtown, Conn. elementary school
shooting. A member of the Republican-controlled legislature plans during
its upcoming session t ...

The
Palestinian Embassy in London has just issued a press release under the
heading "Pressing need to halt Israel’s illegal settlement colonization
campaign via political, legal, and diplomatic means".

electric politics

'Tis
the season for... reflections on life. And death. Yet death often feels
ominously dark, especially when a young person dies before their time.
It's difficult, in such circumstances, to remember that darkness isn't
all bad — indeed, there's reason to believe it may be a source of enlig
...

Amen,
Brother Rick. Thinking about it, we can deduce a few things about
successful mass actions. First, they require a high level of
consciousness regarding the problems to be solved. Ignorance ain't in
the recipe for success. Second, they take a lot of work. If it were
easy, logically we'd be s ...

Former
New York Times Washington Bureau Chief, two time Pulitzer and Emmy
winning reporter Hedrick Smith has written a wonderful book, Who Stole
the American Dream? (Random House, 2012). I must say, if a seventy nine
year old pillar of the journalistic establishment can find his way to a
nearly ...

If
you want proof of the fundamentally unserious nature of American
politics look no further than our conduct of national elections. The
modern twist, paperless electronic voting machines, makes it possible —
even before taking account of Byzantine rules for the Electoral College —
n ...

Quite
apart from the banality of our two political parties it would be so
much less stressful if America could hold reasonably accurate, fair and
open elections. Why don't we? Tova Wang tackles part of this problem in
The Politics of Voter Suppression: Defending and Expanding Americans'
Right To ...

NEW
YORK: Tremor Video, a company that provides media and digital
advertising services to publishers, marketers, and advertising and media
agencies, has named Sally O'Dowd its first head of corporate
communications.

Alberta Wilderness Association
For four years, we've been keeping you up-to-date on Suffield National
Wildlife Area and this very question: What will it be, wild prairie
grasslands or 1,275 new Cenovus gas wells and 220 kilometres of ...

To Do

Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners L.P. (TSX:BEP.UN) ("Brookfield Renewable")
today announced an agreement to acquire a portfolio of 19 hydroelectric
generating stations in Maine from a subsidiary of NextEra Energy
Resources, LLC for a total ...

The
Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) yesterday released the
latest figures on the UK's energy use. They show an increase in the
share of power produced from renewable energy - but the UK is still largely dependant on fossil fuels.

We need renewable
power, and we need new transformers, wires and communications
capabilities so that disruptions on the grid can be immediately
identified and fixed. These investments will make our grid more reliable
today and allow the clean, ...

In
a much anticipated report released recently, the Climate Change
Authority ('the Authority') has recommended that the key elements of
Australia's Renewable Energy Target ('RET') remain unchanged. Maintaining policy certainty and predictability was a ...

powered by

Human Habitat

OLYMPIA – The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology)
has issued final versions of two reports and a response to recent
public comments on results of a large-scale sediment sampling study in
Port Angeles Harbor. Ecology began the study in 2008 as ...

US Ecology,
Inc. (ECOL - Snapshot Report) has delivered 9 straight quarters of
positive earnings surprises, and has been a consistent payer of
dividends since 2005. On October 29, the waste management and recycling
services provider raised its fiscal ...

Here
is a potentially disturbing thought for some of you: there are more
bacterial cells in and on your body than there are cells for your body.
Of course this is not a fact to be overly concerned about as these
bacteria are there for a myriad of ...

Nikolas
is proving to be a real asset to the organisation not only looking
after the site at Kinghorn loch but also working with a wide range of
volunteers that The Ecology Centre supports. Julie Samuel, centre manager, said: “It is fantastic to be in ...

powered by

Water Power

The
federal Environmental Protection Agency released a progress report on
Friday about its national study of the potential impacts of hydraulic
fracturing on drinking water supplies. In nearly 200 pages, the agency lays out data, case studies and a ...

GALVESTON – The Texas environmental agency has ordered water-use
cutbacks to some cities in Galveston and Fort Bend counties because of a
continuing drought that shows no sign of easing next year.
Municipalities and other users served by the Gulf ...

Citizens
will have more time to comment on a controversial plan by the
University of Connecticut and The Metropolitan District to tap the upper
Farmington River to serve the university's growing water needs. The decision to extend the deadline for ...

PAWCATUCK, Conn. (WTNH) -- Water is essential to life. We drink it, bath in it and need it to grow fruits and vegetables. But in one Connecticut town, water will also mean job creation starting next year. With a flip of a switch, folks at Airwell H2O ...

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About Me

I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.